The influence of rejection sensitivity and fear of negative evaluation on emotion recognition

Findings on emotion recognition abilities among the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) population are mixed. Rejection sensitivity (e.g., when a person anxiously expects, readily perceives, and frequently overreacts to rejection), a core feature of BPD, and fear of negative evaluation, a related construct, are hypothesized to play a key role in predicting emotion recognition abilities. The present study primed individuals with feelings of rejection and negative evaluation and then measured emotion recognition accuracy. It also explored the usefulness of a new dynamic stimulus for emotion recognition. Results indicate that rejection sensitivity and fear of negative evaluation did not significantly predict emotion recognition abilities. However, interaction results revealed fear of negative evaluation buffered against the negative impacts of emotion dysregulation, such that individuals high in fear of negative evaluation were significantly less impacted when recognizing fear in others than those low in fear of negative evaluation as emotion dysregulation increased. The findings suggest fear of negative evaluation may help protect against the negative impact of emotion dysregulation on emotion recognition accuracy. Results from the dynamic stimulus provided preliminary evidence to support this task as a measure of emotion recognition ability.