The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC)

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the region of the frontal lobe rostral to the primary motor cortex; this region of the brain is less involved with the control of movement and more involved in formulating plans and strategies. Therefore, If the prefrontal cortex helps to mediate the role of emotions in moral judgements, then damage to this area should impair such judgements (Carlson, N.R., 2010) and result in behaviour considered to be ‘antisocial’. In this essay, I will be interpreting antisocial behaviour as a pattern of behaviour that is verbally or physically harmful to other people, including behaviour that violates social expectations. Dysfunction to the PFC may occur due to many reason; physical trauma, prolonged substance abuse and disease.

Alcoholism has been linked to a volume loss of grey and white matter in the frontal lobe, with more noticeable white matter changes. This can lead to executive function impairment and therefore result in antisocial behaviour (Ukermann & Daum, 2008). Being able to correctly identify facial expressions is very important in social situations and a disruption of this ability could lead to misinterpretations and great deficiencies of interpersonal communication. Philippot et al., 1999 (cited in Ukermann & Daum, 2008) presented emotional facial expressions using four intensity levels and the participants were instructed to rate each expression on a seven-point scale. He found that alcoholics displayed severe impairments in interpreting emotional expressions and often overestimated the intensity of the emotion. He also found that alcoholics displayed a tendency to often mislabel sad expressions as hostile or happy expressions as negative. This could in real life situations lead to aggression and antisocial behaviour if they believe that someone is acting hostile towards them when they are in fact not. This again illustrates that damage to the PFC can lead to antisocial

Bandura (1971) believed that behaviour was a learnt response and not inherent. This theory could be used to explained why people adopt antisocial behaviour. Bandura (1965) carried out a study known as the ‘Bobo doll studies’ in which children observed adult models behaving aggressively towards the doll and then they were asked to interact with the doll in order to see whether they adopted the aggressive behaviour. In these studies, the children not only became more aggressive but accurately imitated every aspect of the adult models behaviour including; the use of the same weapon, performing the same motor movements towards the same targets and saying the same hostile statements (Powell, Symbaluk & Honey, 2009; Bandura