Antisocial Behavior

Definition

Antisocial behavior refers to actions that violate social norms in ways that reflect disregard for others or that reflect the violation of others' rights. The major reason to study antisocial behavior is that it is harmful to people. Also, it raises issues of whether people are inherently prone to be harmful to others and whether harmful, reckless people can be cured.

Distinctions and Examples

Antisocial behavior encompasses a wide range of behaviors, such as initiating physical fights, bullying, lying to others for personal gain, being reckless toward others, and even engaging in unlawful acts that do not directly hurt others but indirectly affect others in a negative way (such as stealing or vandalizing personal property). One distinction among various antisocial acts is whether the acts are overt versus covert—that is, whether the acts are hidden from others. A second distinction is whether the behavior is destructive—that is, whether the behavior directly harms another person. For example, destructive overt acts include physical or verbal aggression, bullying, fighting, threatening, being spiteful, cruel, and rejecting or ostracizing another person. Examples of nondestructive overt acts include arguing, stubbornness, and having a bad temper with others. Examples of destructive covert acts include stealing, lying, cheating, and destroying property, whereas nondestructive covert acts might include truancy, substance use, and swearing. When considering the most versus least harm to others, overt destructive acts are most severe, followed by covert destructive acts, overt nondestructive acts, and finally nondestructive covert acts.

Boys and men are more often perpetrators of antisocial behavior than are girls and women, and they differ in what they do. Males are more likely to engage in criminal activity and overt aggression; females are more likely to engage in relational aggression or harm caused by damaging a peer's reputation (e.g., spreading rumors, excluding them from the peer group).

Prevalence and Persistence

The majority of men who engage in antisocial acts do so only during their adolescent years. Antisocial behavior is so common during adolescence that a majority of men do something antisocial, such as having police contact for an infringement; roughly one third of boys are labeled delinquent at some point during their adolescence. However, most of them cease their antisocial ways by their mid-20s. Terrie Moffitt termed this adolescence-limited antisocial behavior. In contrast, she suggests that life-course-persistent antisocial behavior is committed only by a minority of people. These men show antisocial tendencies and traits as children (even during infancy). These tendencies persist throughout their lives, even if the behaviors per se cease during mid to late adulthood. They typically are diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, which means they show a persistent pattern of frequent antisocial behavior as adults. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–IV), published in 1994 by the American Psychiatric Association, describes the characteristics that lead to this diagnosis. In short, while many people engage in antisocial behavior once or occasionally during adolescence, many fewer people show a persistent antisocial behavior pattern that begins early in life and continues into adulthood.

Causes and Treatment

Because antisocial behaviors have obvious negative consequences for victims, especially, but also for perpetrators (e.g., prison), substantial research has gone toward understanding what causes antisocial behavior and how it can be stopped.

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