Sensational interests and sensation seeking in mentally disordered offenders

Gender-based personality traits in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours

BACKGROUND

The current study aimed to understand the role of callousness, affective dissonance, and two subtypes of sensation seeking personality traits - 1) disinhibition and 2) thrill and adventure seeking - in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours (ASB) among educated youth and to explore the gender differences in them.

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

An online survey was sent to a large sample of students at a UK university. Initially, a sample of N = 539 participants was collected but after screening out the data, N = 429 participants were included for analyses based on the sampling criteria.

RESULTS

Callousness, disinhibition, and affective dissonance significantly predicted both antisocial behaviour subtypes. We found multidimensional nature of callousness in predicting antisocial behaviours, and an intriguing relationship between thrill and adventure seeking and affective dissonance. Interesting gender differences emerged.

CONCLUSIONS

This study has implications for the understanding of the competitive roles of gender-based psychopathological personality traits in terms of callousness and affective dissonance and sensation seeking tendencies in physically aggressive and non-aggressive antisocial behaviours.

Sensational Interests, Mating Effort, and Personality: Evidence for Cross-Cultural Validity

Abstract. We assessed whether violent or macabre interests (“sensational interests”) were related to mating effort and a higher-order personality construct reflecting the combined features of higher Extraversion, lower Psychoticism, and lower Neuroticism in 1321 participants from English-speaking (Tucson, Arizona, and Glasgow, Scotland) and Spanish-speaking (Hermosillo, Mexico, and Talca, Chile) communities. Participants from Spanish-speaking communities generally had more sensational interests. Mating effort was positively related to sensational interests, though the relationship was slightly weaker in Spanish-speaking communities. Personality effects were modest and entirely moderated by language; personality was negatively related to sensational interests in English-speaking communities, but positively associated to sensational interests in Spanish-speaking communities. These findings suggest that the relationship between mating effort and sensational interests is universal and reflects general intrasexual competition, whereas the relationship between personality and sensational interests is more culture-specific.