Antisocial personality has been a topic of psychological studies for over half a century. Many of the traits expressed by patients inflicted with this condition are considered psychopathic. The traits such as disregard for others, intense aggression, and lack of remorse are commonly associated with mental illness.
Traits, on the other hand, offer a more complex puzzle. With this subject, studies between psychology and biology coincide. Several fruits that came up from these fields include theories that natural selection is responsible for the mental illnesses we know of today rather than a mere malfunction in the brain.
Antisocial Disorder as Evolutionary Product
Although evolution is linked with the being of antisocial people, many still doubt that the concept benefits such negative behaviors and other traits of the affected individuals.
In a new study presented by Canadian scholars, psychopathy and its associated traits were discussed. ScienceAlert reported that, according to the authors, the condition lacks the signals that make it a mental disorder.
Surprisingly, the experts believe that psychopathy should be considered much of an operating function as nature intended, instead of a psychological illness like how we perceive it today.
The conclusion from this research was based on the analysis gathered from today's examinations, where psychopathic assessments are theorized to depend on handedness. But this correlation was already presented previously in the early days of the criminal psychology field.
Older research papers showed that left-handedness and a 'sinister' personality are sometimes correlated. In other studies, mental illness is also believed to be a sign of a person's mental degeneracy.
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Psychopathy and Handedness Bias
Today, the science community has debunked this analogy, stating that there is no plausible evidence that could tell how handedness reflects the personality of criminals.
The meta-analysis of 16 separate studies shows no connection variances in the rate of psychopathic scores between right-handed people, offenders, and mental health patients.
University of Ottawa School of Psychology expert Lesleigh Pullman, the lead author of the study, explained in a report that a new perspective based on evolutionary outlook was found, in which psychopathy is indeed a product of life history and social exploitation that was induced by adverse selection.
The evidence shown in the study mirrors previous research that discusses how the traits of psychopathic individuals are relative to the signs of what the expert calls neurodevelopmental perturbations.
Some of the papers examined by the team consider that left-handedness is linked with prenatal stress, low birth weight, prenatal exposure to hormones, and birth complications.
However, the meta-analysis gathered from over 2 million people revealed that only 11 percent was left-handed, contrasting the biased views of the previous examinations on psychopathy and its traits.
The authors iterated that the right-handed bias of these studies was anchored to the evolutionary effects such as brain lateralization and determined asymmetry of the brains. The study was published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, titled "Is Psychopathy a Mental Disorder or an Adaptation? Evidence From a Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Psychopathy and Handedness."
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