Summary: Genetics Vs Environment
Anti-social Personality Disorder: Genetics vs. the Environment
Jamie J. Lang
Island Coast High School
Anti-social Personality Disorder: Genetics vs. the Environment
Anti-social Personality Disorder
Anti-social personality refers to a psychological disorder in which a person lacks the ability to feel emotions such as empathy, remorse, and guilt. These people are often referred to as psychopaths and are dangerous to society because of their violent nature and abilities to overlook what is usually perceived as “wrong” or “immoral”.
Genetics vs. the Environment.
This disorder can come from the conditions of one’s home environment or someone can be genetically predisposed to develop symptoms when crossing with an environmental trigger. Either …show more content…
Criminologist Nathalie Fontaine of Indiana University studies the tendency toward being callous or unemotional- signs of anti-social personality disorder- in children between 7 and 12 years old. Her research showed that these traits aren’t fixed, and can change in children as they grow. So, if psychologists identify children with these risk factors early on, it may not be too late (Moskowitz, 2011). This study supports the idea that, although a person might hold the physical or genetic predisposed factors to develop this disorder, it takes an environmental trigger for the patient to actually begin showing …show more content…
In one recent study, scientists compares 27 people with severe antisocial personality disorder- psychopaths- with 32 non-psychopaths. In the psychopaths, the researchers observed deformations in another part of the brain called the amygdala- the seat for human emotion- and found that the psychopaths showed a thinning of the outer layer of that region of the brain and an 18 percent reduction in volume compared to that of the average human inability to learn from reward and punishment and also have little response to stress. In Japan, a study was done to support the idea that psychopaths do not respond to reward and punishment, showing a difference in the prefrontal cortex- judgment and panning portion of the brain- in psychopaths compared to the average human brain. In this study, 145 University students in Japan took the 26 question Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale test where they were asked to rate their level of agreement on statements relating to their lives. The 20 students who scored the highest on the test were put in a group labeled as the “high psychopathy group” (variable) while the 20 who scored the lowest on the test were placed in the “low psychopathy group” (Control). When presented with various tasks and given reward for one and punishment for another, the researchers found the highly psychopathic showed no change in the proficiency with which the tasks were completed, whether they were offered reward for doing well or threatened
Jamie J. Lang
Island Coast High School
Anti-social Personality Disorder: Genetics vs. the Environment
Anti-social Personality Disorder
Anti-social personality refers to a psychological disorder in which a person lacks the ability to feel emotions such as empathy, remorse, and guilt. These people are often referred to as psychopaths and are dangerous to society because of their violent nature and abilities to overlook what is usually perceived as “wrong” or “immoral”.
Genetics vs. the Environment.
This disorder can come from the conditions of one’s home environment or someone can be genetically predisposed to develop symptoms when crossing with an environmental trigger. Either …show more content…
Criminologist Nathalie Fontaine of Indiana University studies the tendency toward being callous or unemotional- signs of anti-social personality disorder- in children between 7 and 12 years old. Her research showed that these traits aren’t fixed, and can change in children as they grow. So, if psychologists identify children with these risk factors early on, it may not be too late (Moskowitz, 2011). This study supports the idea that, although a person might hold the physical or genetic predisposed factors to develop this disorder, it takes an environmental trigger for the patient to actually begin showing …show more content…
In one recent study, scientists compares 27 people with severe antisocial personality disorder- psychopaths- with 32 non-psychopaths. In the psychopaths, the researchers observed deformations in another part of the brain called the amygdala- the seat for human emotion- and found that the psychopaths showed a thinning of the outer layer of that region of the brain and an 18 percent reduction in volume compared to that of the average human inability to learn from reward and punishment and also have little response to stress. In Japan, a study was done to support the idea that psychopaths do not respond to reward and punishment, showing a difference in the prefrontal cortex- judgment and panning portion of the brain- in psychopaths compared to the average human brain. In this study, 145 University students in Japan took the 26 question Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale test where they were asked to rate their level of agreement on statements relating to their lives. The 20 students who scored the highest on the test were put in a group labeled as the “high psychopathy group” (variable) while the 20 who scored the lowest on the test were placed in the “low psychopathy group” (Control). When presented with various tasks and given reward for one and punishment for another, the researchers found the highly psychopathic showed no change in the proficiency with which the tasks were completed, whether they were offered reward for doing well or threatened