Racial discrimination and borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms among Black women: unpacking the role of the superwoman schema.

Abstract

Objectives: Aligning with past work positioning racial discrimination as invalidation, or a form of interpersonal rejection and devaluation with myriad psychological effects, we aim to examine the role of Strong Black Woman/Superwoman Schema (SBW/SWS) in the relation between racial discrimination and borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms among Black women. We predicted that SWS would explain the relation between experiences of racial discrimination and BPD symptoms. We also hypothesized that while SWS would contribute to emotional control and thereby higher BPD symptoms, SWS would also contribute to racial pride and thereby lower BPD symptoms. Exploratorily, we examined whether emotion regulation challenges moderate the relation between SWS and BPD symptoms.

Methods: A national community sample of 81 Black women (M_age = 37.8, SD_age = 12.8) endorsing racial discrimination were recruited through ResearchMatch and reported on SBW/SWS, BPD symptoms, and other emotion-focused assessments. Simple and serial mediation were used to examine the primary hypotheses.

Results: While racial discrimination was not significantly associated with BPD symptoms, SWS did explain this relation. There was further a significant serial effect such that racial discrimination contributed to SWS, which then fueled emotional overcontrol, and higher BPD symptoms. Racial pride did not emerge as a buffer from BPD symptoms. Lastly, the tendency to use interpersonal pathways to enhance positive affect strengthened the relation between SWS and BPD symptoms.

Conclusions: This paper furthers our understanding of how SWS and associated emotion processes link identity-based discrimination to emotional, identity, and interpersonal challenges among Black women.