Antisocial Personality Disorder Research Paper

Words: 1742
Pages: 7

Antisocial personality disorder is a heritable trait that can exist in a person’s pedigree. Are antisocial behaviors more environmental influenced or genetic influenced? Being antisocial can sometimes be sociopathic and sometimes psychopathic, one does not follow the rules, and intentionally disrespects people. Antisocial behavior is seen through delinquency, criminality, aggression, and conduct disorder behaviors, making it a widespread problem for communities living in the United States (Anderson, 1999). An individual with this particular disorder may display manipulative behavior or does not show any empathy; also conduct disorders are linked to depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. Antisocial personality disorder is described as behaving …show more content…
Due to the fact that society sees it more in males, a researcher questioned if it is gender correlated, but that does not mean it is an autosomal trait (Meier, Slutske, Heath, & Martin, 2011). A study with 6,265 Australian twins showed that women are more likely to inherit antisocial behaviors than men but that both equally are affected by environments and genetics. On the other hand, approximately 4% of females and 16% of males met lifetime criteria for adult antisocial behavior (Meier et al., 2011) Males have more testosterone in their anatomy, and are more socially accepted to show aggressive emotions than women, which these two factors can cause these sex differences. According to the European Journal of Neuroscience it states, “aggression is usually associated with increased hormonal and autonomic stress responses” (2010). Keeping in mind, that there are studies that go against the studies, that say men are more at risk for ASPD. In general, the risk factors are more similar than different in ASPD, in a study funded by National Institutes of Health (2011), there was evidence for differences in sex-specific genetic factors. It was difficult to determine whether these sex differences were attributable to different genetic factors or diverse types of shared environmental influences for males and females. Having inconsistent findings emphasizes genetic differences affecting males more (Meier et al., 2011). For example, …show more content…
The more grey matter increase in the frontal lobe the chance of antisocial personality disorder. Men in the middle, frontal, orbito-frontal and rectal gyral regions had more gray matter than women suggesting that it may be a reason for why men are more likely to inherit ASPD than