Abstract
Emotional intelligence as a part of social cognition has, to our knowledge, never been investigated in patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), though the disorder is characterized by aspects of emotional dysfunctioning. PTSD often occurs with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as a common comorbidity. Studies about social cognition and emotional intelligence in patients with BPD propose aberrant social cognition, but produced inconsistent results regarding emotional intelligence. The present study aims to assess emotional intelligence in patients with PTSD without comorbid BPD, PTSD with comorbid BPD, and BPD patients without comorbid PTSD, as well as in healthy controls.
71 patients with PTSD (41 patients with PTSD without comorbid BPD, 30 patients with PTSD with comorbid BPD), 56 patients with BPD without PTSD, and 63 healthy controls filled in the Test of Emotional Intelligence (TEMINT). Patients with PTSD without comorbid BPD showed impairments in emotional intelligence compared to patients with BPD without PTSD, and compared to healthy controls. These impairments were not restricted to specific emotions. Patients with BPD did not differ significantly from healthy controls. This study provides evidence for an impaired emotional intelligence in PTSD without comorbid BPD compared to BPD and healthy controls, affecting a wide range of emotions.
1. Introduction
PTSD is associated with disturbances in social cognition, e.g., feelings of detachment or estrangement from others. One model that captures aspects of social interaction is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has been defined as the “ability to carry out accurate reasoning focused on emotions and the ability to use emotions and emotional knowledge to enhance thought.”(Mayer et al., 2008). Following this definition of emotional intelligence, it affects many aspects of social functioning and, thus, can be considered an aspect of social cognition. Social cognition is referred to as the sum of processes that allow individuals to interact with each other, consciously or unconsciously perceiving, interpreting and processing social information (Adolphs, 1999). Constructs that capture the essence of social cognition include empathy, theory of mind (Roepke et al., 2012) and emotional intelligence (Varo et al., 2017). It is widely accepted that empathy consists of at least two components, a cognitive and an emotional component. The cognitive component, referred to as cognitive empathy, means the ability to represent the mental states of others, which is also referred to as perspective taking, mentalizing or theory of mind. The emotional component, referred to as emotional empathy, is conceptualized as the emotional response to another person`s affective state (Blair, 2005).
4.5 Conclusions
In summary, patients with PTSD without BPD show impairments in emotional intelligence compared to patients with BPD without PTSD and compared to healthy controls. These impairments were not specific to any emotions but affected the performance of all emotions, except “unease”, “pride” and “surprise”. Possible explanations for these impairments e.g., core symptoms of PTSD, lack of social support or an underlying deficit in emotional intelligence, are discussed. Further research is necessary to investigate whether the detected deficit in emotional intelligence proves to be a risk factor for developing PTSD or if it is a result of the symptomatology of PTSD. Future research should furthermore assess whether it is beneficial to include emotional intelligence training sessions in PTSD psychotherapy treatment.
