Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Linked to Distress Over Social Closeness and Rules

People with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) may not only struggle with rigidity and perfectionism in their daily lives, but also react unusually to the social dynamics of closeness and rule-following. A new study published in the journal Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation evaluated whether OCPD is associated with impairments across multiple domains of psychosocial functioning, and whether those impairments vary with treatment-seeking status, specific psychopathological features, and patterns of social-cognitive response. The findings suggest that the severity of OCPD pathology shapes functional outcomes, with rigidity playing a central role in psychosocial impairment.

The research team compared three groups: 39 outpatients with OCPD, 36 non-clinical individuals who met OCPD criteria but were not in treatment (NC-OCPD), and 80 healthy controls. Participants were assessed on global, social-occupational, relational and empathic functioning, perceived quality of life, rigidity and perfectionism. They then completed two virtual ball-toss paradigms. The first, Cyberball, measured distress following excessive social closeness, or overinclusion, relative to fair inclusion and exclusion. The second, Cybershape, measured distress in response to rule-violation scenarios relative to fair play.

The results showed that the treatment-seeking OCPD group displayed greater psychosocial impairment and worse quality of life than the other groups, along with lower perspective taking and higher personal distress than healthy controls. Both OCPD groups reported higher rigidity and perfectionism than controls, but the clinical group was also more rigid than the non-clinical group. Across the sample, rigidity correlated more strongly with functional impairment than perfectionism did, and rigidity was associated with decreased perspective taking.

The ball-toss tasks revealed distinctive social-cognitive patterns. After the Cyberball overinclusion condition, both OCPD groups reported higher negative emotions than healthy controls, suggesting that even excessive social closeness can be aversive for people with this personality profile. However, only the treatment-seeking OCPD group reacted more negatively than controls to standard, fair social inclusion, and this difference was linked to increased personal distress. In the Cybershape task, the clinical OCPD group reported that even the fair-play condition violated their expectations, while the non-clinical group reported greater distress than controls specifically in response to rule violations throughout the task.

The authors conclude that treatment-seeking individuals with OCPD show heightened sensitivity to both excessive and normal interpersonal closeness, along with a tendency to perceive even normative social contexts as violating their expectations. By contrast, non-clinical individuals with OCPD maintain levels of functioning comparable to healthy controls, but remain distressed by excessive interpersonal closeness and by situations requiring adherence to explicit behavioral rules. These findings point to specific social-cognitive patterns associated with psychosocial difficulties in OCPD and highlight rigidity as a key factor in impairment. As an observational cross-sectional comparison, the study identifies associations rather than causal effects, and its findings are limited to the sampled groups and the laboratory paradigms used.

Subject of Research: Social-cognitive responses to closeness and rule violations in obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

Article Title: Altered responses to social closeness and rule violations in obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

Article References: Lisco, A., Fabietti, C., Riccardi, S., Roscigno, F., Preti, E., Riva, P., & De Panfilis, C. (2026). Altered responses to social closeness and rule violations in obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40479-026-00370-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40479-026-00370-2

Keywords: obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, psychosocial functioning, rigidity, perfectionism, Cyberball, social cognition, rule violations, personality disorders, quality of life, perspective taking, Altered, responses