Heart Rate and Antisocial Behavior: The Mediating Role of Impulsive Sensation Seeking

Abstract

Although a low resting heart rate is considered the best-replicated biological correlate of antisocial behavior, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains largely unknown. Sensation-seeking and fearlessness theories have been proposed to explain this relationship, although little empirical research has been conducted to test these theories. This study addressed this limitation by examining the relationship between heart rate and antisocial behavior in a community sample of 335 adolescent boys. Heart rate was measured during a series of cognitive, stress, and rest tasks. Participants also completed self-report measures of state fear, impulsive sensation seeking, and both aggressive and nonaggressive forms of antisocial behavior. As expected, increased levels of aggression and nonviolent delinquency were associated with a low heart rate. Impulsive sensation seeking, but not fearlessness, significantly mediated the association between heart rate and aggression. This study is the first to show that impulsive sensation seeking partly underlies the relationship between aggression and heart rate, and it is one of the few to examine the mechanism of action linking heart rate to antisocial behavior. Findings at a theoretical level highlight the role of impulsive sensation seeking in understanding antisocial behavior and at an intervention level suggest it as a potential target for behavioral change.Autonomic nervous system activity has long been examined in relation to psychopathy, aggression, and antisocial behavior (e.g., Davies and Maliphant, 1971;Hare, 1968). Psychophysiological indices of autonomic activity, which are noninvasive to record and capture nearly immediate physiological changes in response to external stimuli, include skin conductance, heart rate, and skin-potential response. Of these measures, a low resting heart rate is considered the best-replicated biological correlate of antisocial behavior in children and adolescents (Lorber, 2004;Ortiz and Raine, 2004). One meta-analysis *

Differentiating Sexual Offender Type on Measures of Impulsivity and Compulsivity

“…Zuckerman and others have long examined sensation seeking and impulsive behaviors' relation to criminal behavior and risky sexual behavior. In a study of 335 adolescent males and impulsive sensation seeking correlated significantly with violent antisocial behavior (r = .25), nonviolent antisocial behavior (r = .25) (Portnoy et al, 2014). Further, Gaither and Sellbom (2003) found moderate positive correlations between higher scores in sensation seeking and more one-night stands (r = .31), more partners in the last 3 months (r = .31), having a wider range of sexual experiences (r = .49), more frequent masturbation (r = .25), and engaging in vaginal intercourse at an earlier age among college students (r = ¡.31).…”

Using basic neurobiological measures in criminological research

“…Recently, it has been found that of the two proposed explanations, sensation seeking appears to be the strongest mediator for the heart rate -antisocial behavior relationship. Portnoy et al (2014) showed that measures of impulsive sensation-seeking behavior explained around 36% percent of the total effect of heart rate on aggression and 27% percent of the effect of heart rate on non-violent delinquent behavior.…”

“…Owen et al 1996aOwen et al 1996b Furthermore, researchers should keep in mind that any test setting will be mildly stressful for most participants. Measuring heart rate prior to the beginning of an assessment might therefore contain a modest element of anticipatory anxiety (Portnoy et al 2014). For this reason, it is recommended to include more than one baseline measurement in the assessment and calculate the average heart rate over different baseline periods, or decide which measure best reflects a stress-free moment.…”

“…Suggested confounders are: body mass index, socioeconomic status, physical fitness, smoking, medication use, age, gender and race (e.g. Armstrong et al 2009;Portnoy et al 2014;Scarpa et al 2010). If a control variable correlates with both resting heart rate and the antisocial behavior outcome measure, it should be included in further analyses.…”

The Biology of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder Symptomatology: Identifying an Extremely K-Selected Life History Variant

“…Conceptually overlapping with antisocial personality disorder and sociopathy (Mealey 1995), psychopathy is a highly heritable neurocognitive pattern (Blair et al 2005) eliciting exploitative, manipulative (Hare et al 1989), sensation seeking (Portnoy et al 2014), and Machiavellian (Paulhus and Williams 2002) behavior. Historically envisioned as a product of habitual abuse and poor attachment, there is, however, scant support for the causality of these environmental insults (Blair et al 2005).…”