Concept
Anti-social behaviour
Overview
Anti-social behaviours, sometimes called dissocial behaviours, are actions that are considered to violate the rights of or otherwise harm others by committing crime or nuisance, such as stealing and physical attack or noncriminal behaviours such as lying and manipulation. It is considered to be disruptive to others in society. This can be carried out in various ways, including not limited to intentional aggression, as well as covert and overt hostility. Anti-social behaviour also develops through social interaction within the family and community. It continuously affects a child's temperament, cognitive ability, and involvement with negative peers, dramatically affecting children's cooperative problem-solving skills. Many people also label behaviour which is deemed contrary to prevailing norms for social conduct as anti-social behaviour. However, researchers have stated that it is a difficult term to define, particularly in the United Kingdom where many acts fall into its category. The term is especially used in Irish English and British English.
Although the term is fairly new to the common lexicon, the word anti-social behaviour has been used for many years in the psychosocial world where it was defined as "unwanted behaviour as the result of personality disorder." For example, David Farrington, a British criminologist and forensic psychologist, stated that teenagers can exhibit anti-social behaviour by engaging in various amounts of wrongdoings such as stealing, vandalism, sexual promiscuity, excessive smoking, heavy drinking, confrontations with parents, and gambling. In children, conduct disorders could result from ineffective parenting. Anti-social behaviour is typically associated with other behavioural and developmental issues such as hyperactivity, depression, learning disabilities, and impulsivity. Alongside these issues, one can be predisposed or more inclined to develop such behaviour due to one's genetics, neurobiological and environmental stressors in the prenatal stage of one's life, through the early childhood years.
The American Psychiatric Association, in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, diagnoses persistent anti-social behaviour starting from a young age as antisocial personality disorder. Genetic factors include abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex of the brain while neurobiological risk factors include maternal drug use during pregnancy, birth complications, low birth weight, prenatal brain damage, traumatic head injury, and chronic illness. The World Health Organization includes it in the International Classification of Diseases as dissocial personality disorder. A pattern of persistent anti-social behaviours can also be present in children and adolescents diagnosed with conduct problems, including conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder under the DSM-5. It has been suggested that individuals with intellectual disabilities have a higher tendency to display anti-social behaviours, but this may be related to social deprivation and mental health problems. More research is required on this topic.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Untruthfulness, as a practice, is almost always a product of fear. The child brought up without fear will be truthful, not in virtue of a moral effort, but because it will never occur to him to be otherwise. The child who has been treated wisely and kindly has a frank look in the eyes, and a fearless demeanour even with strangers; whereas the child that has been subject to nagging or severity is in perpetual terror…
Bertrand Russell, Education and the good life
Close in meaning to Anti-social behaviour; the term itself is not named.
It rather seemed to us that the child brings along into the world germs of sexual activity and that even while taking nourishment it at the same time also enjoys a sexual gratification which it then seeks again to procure for itself through the familiar activity of "thumbsucking." The sexual activity of the child, however, does not develop in the same measure as its other functions, but merges first into the…
Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex
Close in meaning to Anti-social behaviour; the term itself is not named.
On this principle alone can I understand how the gestures and expressions which come under the present head of antithesis have originated. If indeed they are serviceable to man or to any other animal, in aid of inarticulate cries or language, they will likewise be voluntarily employed, and the habit will thus be strengthened. But whether or not of service as a means of communication, the tendency to perform opposite…
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Close in meaning to Anti-social behaviour; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Nihilism.