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Abstract:
Background:
Dysfunction in social interactions is a hallmark of several psychiatric disorders.
There has thus been a substantial recent interest in characterizing aberrant and normal social
decision-making using games from experimental economics. However, these studies have so far
covered only a small range of social interactions. One important omission has been social
dominance. A maladaptive reaction to social dominance may be particularly relevant for
neuropsychiatric disorders such as borderline personality disorder (BPD) in which there is trouble
sustaining social relations. Here, we examined how people with BPD behave in social interactions
involving differences in social dominance.
Methods:
Participants (169 controls and 313 BPDs) played a multi-round Social Hierarchy game
where money could be used to increase (or maintain) social status. We then fit computational
models to the recorded behavior.
Results:
We found no difference between patients with BPD and Controls in the amount spent to
become or stay dominant, the challenge rate, or the number of rounds in the dominant position
(p>0.05). However, and contrary to expectations, we found that BPDs in the dominant position
offered higher initial transfers to the other player compared to controls (p=0.03). In the
computational model, this was associated with a higher positive inequity aversion parameter.
Furthermore, BPD patients challenged more when given an unfair transfer (p=0.02).
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that BPD patients and Controls value social dominance similarly
but that BPD patients may be more inequity averse. We offer specific computational parameters that can be used to quantitatively characterize and phenotype each individual.
