People who show persistent antisocial behaviour react equally to positive and negative feedback from others. That is one of the insights from the research of Ilse van de Groep (Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences). She conducted research on young adults who exhibited antisocial behaviour in their childhood and came into contact with the police before the age of 12. Among other things, she had the participants perform tasks while lying in MRI scanners.
When it comes to juvenile delinquency, the link is quickly made to an unsafe home situation where parents struggle with debt or addictions, for example. These kinds of environmental factors are very important for understanding the behaviour of these young people, but at the same time, according to researcher Ilse van de Groep, that is not the whole story: "You also want to understand how they behave and see if you can explain differences based on their behaviour itself or the way their brain works."
For her research, the PhD student focused on young adults (18 to 30 years old) who display antisocial behaviour or who previously displayed this behaviour but have now stopped doing so. All these young people had come into contact with police before the age of 12, for example for arson or shoplifting. She compared them with a 'control group' that never showed antisocial behaviour. "In antisocial behaviour, a person does not show consideration for others and the behaviour goes against the social norm," Van de Groep explained. "When young people come into contact with the police early, it is a predictor of their behaviour later on. Yet only a small proportion go on and, fortunately, you see a larger proportion stop."
But what differences do you see between young adults who show antisocial behaviour or who have stopped doing so, and in what way does that differ from the group that never showed this behaviour? And how do you research that and then find differences in how the brain works? To do this, the study participants had to do various tasks while lying in an MRI scanner. "I wanted to know how people process feedback from others and how they think about themselves. With an MRI scanner, you can see during the tasks which brain regions show more activity and thus see what is happening in the brain."
No advice on compliments
In one of the tasks, participants received different types of feedback (positive, negative or neutral) from their environment. They were also allowed to press a button that sounded a loud sound signal. When a participant pressed it longer, it gave an indication of the aggression level. Whereas youngsters from the control group showed more brain activity especially with positive and negative feedback, in the antisocial group the response to all types of feedback was the same. "They did not seem to know as well what to do with the feedback and interpreted feedback as negative more quickly. Normally, people can distinguish quite well. If someone is nice, you act nice back. This group did not seem to want this or they just cannot make this distinction," van de Groep explains.
This suggests that young adults who exhibit antisocial behaviour process information differently. Young adults who stopped antisocial behaviour showed similar sensitivity, but may actually adapt their behaviour extra well (or display desirable behaviour), especially after positive and neutral feedback. "This possibly indicates that they have developed a mechanism in their brain that allows them to adapt their behaviour better. Of course, it could also be that it takes this group more effort and therefore the brain regions involved show more activity."
Self-image and psychopathic traits
The PhD student also researched young people's self-image. Young adults with higher levels of psychopathic traits thought more negatively about themselves, especially about how social they are towards others. Van de Groep: "Self-esteem in this group has hardly been studied and this is one of the first times we have been able to demonstrate this with experimental tasks. Usually, research focuses on empathy tasks. But antisocial behaviour is not only related to how you view others, but also to how you see yourself."
Juvenile crime has been falling in the Netherlands for years, but according to the researcher, figures give a distorted picture. On the contrary, figures also show that the group that comes into contact with the police at a very young age and stays on the wrong path is on the rise. "They are responsible for the largest amount of crimes. So there are fewer young people criminally active, but more young people who stay in crime. This is worrying, yet you don't hear this very often."
A major challenge in this study was finding young adults with persistent antisocial behaviour who were willing to cooperate. We eventually managed to get 12 of them to perform tasks in the scanner (the other groups consisted of about 40 participants). Understanding behaviour and the mechanisms in the brain is important, according to the researcher: "This research, although in its infancy now, could potentially help develop interventions in the future. Research on environmental factors is also important, but a person's environment you have little influence on. If a young person comes from a bad family, you can't just change that."
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Ilse van de Groep is researcher at Erasmus SYNC Lab. In the Erasmus SYNC lab, research is conducted on the dynamic development of the adolescent brain. Read more about Erasmus SYNC lab.
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