Sex Bias in Classifying Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

This study investigated sex bias in the classification of borderline and narcissistic personality disorders. A sample of psychologists in training for a post-master degree (N = 180) read brief case histories (male or female version) and made DSM classification. To differentiate sex bias due to sex stereotyping or to base rate variation, we used different case histories, respectively: (1) non-ambiguous case histories with enough criteria of either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder to meet the threshold for classification, and (2) an ambiguous case with subthreshold features of both borderline and narcissistic personality disorder.