ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR: CONCEPT, THEORIES AND RISK FACTORS - GEOGRAFÍA - 2024

The antisocial behavior refers to any behavior that goes against social norms and laws. It encompasses a large number of behaviors that attack the social order, as well as behaviors that promote this type of behavior.

Examples of antisocial behaviors are those that attack private property, such as stealing or vandalism, or those that attack the physical integrity or honor of people, such as physically attacking, insulting, coercing or harassing.

At present, the study of antisocial behavior is acquiring high relevance from the scientific community. The detection of the elements that give rise to the development of these behaviors, as well as the design of treatments that allow to intervene are elements investigated today.

In this article an approach is made to the conceptualization of antisocial behavior, the main elements associated with these behaviors are discussed, and their main risk factors are reviewed.

Characteristics of antisocial behavior

Antisocial behavior constitutes, today, a serious problem in different societies. Likewise, it tends to be a particularly problematic element.

Antisocial behavior refers to a wide variety of acts and behaviors that are characterized by violating social norms and the rights of others.

However, such a definition provides a certainly ambiguous explanation about the properties of antisocial behavior. This fact motivates that the term is used to describe a great variety of habitually little delimited behaviors.

At present, it is argued that what a behavior is classified as antisocial may depend on different factors. The most prominent are:

1. Judgments about the severity of the acts.
2. Judgments about the departure from the normative guidelines.
3. Age of the person who carries out said behaviors.
4. Gender of the person who carries out said behaviors.
5. Social class of the person who carries out said behaviors.

Thus, antisocial behavior is a term whose reference point is always the sociocultural context in which the behavior develops.

For this reason, nowadays there are no objective criteria to determine what acts can be included within antisocial behavior and what behaviors fall outside this category.

Behaviors that violate social and coexistence norms reflect a degree of severity that is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from the type of behaviors that develop in people's daily lives.

This means that antisocial behaviors involve behaviors that are not common in terms of their form or their intensity of execution.

Antisocial behavior from sociology

Sociology is probably the discipline that has studied antisocial behavior in the greatest depth and depth. From this approach, antisocial behaviors have traditionally been considered as an integral part of the more general concept of deviance.

From sociology, antisocial behavior would be understood as a series of behaviors, ideas or personal attributes that are characterized by violating a specific social norm.

The social norm that specifies the sociological approach denotes two interrelated semantic fields. On the one hand, the norm would be indicative of how frequent, usual or statistically normal about people's behaviors.

In this sense, the norms would be conceptualized as essentially descriptive criteria that would be in charge of defining a range of mostly typical behaviors within a given sociocultural system.

On the other hand, the norm has an evaluative and prescriptive component. That is, it defines what is permissible, appropriate or good through social expectations about how people should think or act.

From the sociological approach, the implicit deviation within antisocial behavior not only determines infrequent behaviors but also negative, reprehensible and punishable acts.

Antisocial behavior from the legal point of view

From the legal and / or forensic approach, antisocial behavior is usually included under labels and categories such as crime, crime or delinquent. In fact, these categories are especially protagonist elements in criminology, which focuses mainly on the study of antisocial behaviors.

Under this approach, the crime is conceived as an act that violates the criminal law of a given society. The offender is that person that the justice system has prosecuted and blamed for the commission of a crime.

Historical-cultural relativism also emerges in this type of approach as an element closely related to the definition of crime.

Laws and institutionalized norms that protect certain legal assets are subject to multiple variations in time and space depending on government ideologies.

In this sense, the relativity that characterizes legal systems leads to both crimes and antisocial behaviors becoming a changing and multifaceted reality.

This fact contributes even more to making the conceptualization of antisocial behavior difficult. Far from constituting a natural or predetermined category, crime responds to complex processes of socio-political production and becomes a phenomenon whose content can only be specified based on the legal context in which it occurs.

Antisocial behavior from the psychopathological approach

The psychopathological approach has been another of the disciplines that, traditionally, has obtained a greater role in the study of antisocial behaviors.

In fact, psychology is one of the sciences that has studied this type of behavior in greater depth and, what is more important, has made it possible to obtain information about its development and functioning.

From this perspective, antisocial behavior has been conceptualized as a series of components more or less belonging to certain disorders or psychological alterations.

This association between antisocial behavior and mental disorder has made it possible to determine what psychological processes are involved in the development of this type of behavior.

In this sense, the disorders that have been most frequently associated with this type of behavior are: impulse control disorders, antisocial personality disorder and oppositional defiant disorder.

With regard to impulse control disorders, various pathologies such as kleptomania, pyromania or intermittent explosive disorder, have been linked to antisocial behavior.

The antisocial personality disorder, on the other hand, shows how the personality traits and the character development of people is also a key element when it comes to predicting the appearance of antisocial behaviors.

Finally, oppositional defiant disorder is an alteration that originates in childhood and adolescence that is characterized by the presentation of an oppositional, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior pattern, directed at authority figures.

Antisocial behavior from the behavioral perspective

Finally, from a behavioral point of view, antisocial behavior constitutes an element of special significance and utility as an object of study for different reasons.

First, within the behavioral approach, antisocial behavior includes both clinically significant behaviors that are strictly criminal, as well as a wide range of anti-normative acts that, without being illegal, are considered harmful or harmful to society.

For example, an antisocial behavior considered clinically significant would be assaulting someone or stealing. On the other hand, other behaviors such as dirtying the public thoroughfare or disturbing other people, would be part of non-illegal anti-normative behaviors.

From a behavioral point of view, it is allowed to separate antisocial behavior from criminal behavior. The first category would encompass the second, but would not be exclusive to it.

On the other hand, the behavioral approach acquires a high relevance in the antisocial behavior of children. Anti-normative behaviors such as disruptive behaviors in the school setting or aggressive behaviors among children are elements that are classified within antisocial behavior through this approach.

Associated concepts

The complexity of conceptualizing antisocial behavior is also affected by a series of concepts associated with it.

Thus, it is important to clarify other constructs that are closely related to antisocial behavior. The differential distinction can help to conceptually delineate antisocial behavior. The main associated concepts are.

Aggression and aggressiveness

Aggression is an external, overt, and observable behavior that has been defined as a response that provides harmful stimuli to another organism.

On the other hand, the aggressive state constitutes a combination of cognitions, emotions and behavioral tendencies that are triggered by stimuli capable of evoking an aggressive response.

Thus, aggression refers to a specific harmful behavior towards another person, which is part of antisocial behavior.

Aggression, on the other hand, does not only imply the presence of aggressive behavior, but also a series of aggressive cognitive and emotional responses.

Aggression and violence

Violence is a concept that is also strongly associated with antisocial behavior and that, traditionally, has been difficult to distinguish from aggression.

In general, violence is a term used to describe the most extreme forms of aggressive behavior, as well as antisocial behavior.

In addition, violence is also often a concept that is closely related to physical aggression, although it can also be applied to psychological aggression. In general terms, the main properties of the term violence are:

1- It constitutes a type of maladaptive aggression that does not have any kind of relationship with the social situation in which it is carried out.

2- It requires the execution of behaviors that denote an excessive use of physical force within an essentially human sociocultural context.

3- It is biologically supported by an altered mechanism that is responsible for regulating the adaptive function of aggression. Due to the deregulation of the mechanism, an eminently destructive character and behavior develops on people and things.

Risk factor's

Beyond the conceptualization and description of the properties of antisocial behavior, another element that is widely studied today are the factors that can predispose the person to carry out this type of behavior.

These factors can be grouped into six broad categories: environmental factors, individual factors, biological factors, psychological factors, socialization factors, and school factors.

Regarding environmental factors, the media, unemployment, poverty and suffering from social discrimination are the elements that are most significantly related to antisocial behavior.

In individual factors, however, it has been found that genetic transmission and the abnormal development of certain toxin hormones or neurotransmitters, such as testosterone or the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) are also related to antisocial behavior.

Finally, the other categories of risk factors present as more important elements the suffering of psychological disorders, relational disorders within the family environment and school maladjustment.

References

1. Huesmann, R. and Eron, L. (1984). Cognitive processes and the persistence of aggressive behavior. Aggressive Behavior, 10, 243-251.
2. Jacobs, PA, Brunton, M., Melville MM, Brittain, RP, and McClermont, WF (1965). Aggressive behavior, mental subnormality and the XYY male. Nature.; 208-1351-2.
3. Loeber, R., and Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1998). Development of juvenile antisocial behavior and delinquency, Clincal Psychology Review, 10, 1-4.
4. López-Ibor Aliño, Juan J. & Valdés Miyar, Manuel (dir.) (2002). DSM-IV-TR. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Revised text. Barcelona: Masson.
5. Millon, Theodore & Davis, Roger D. (First Edition 1998. Reprints 1999 (2), 2000, 2003, 2004). Personality Disorders. Beyond DSM-IV. Barcelona: Masson.