Roles of Antisocial Personality Disorder

¶ … Roles of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Psychopathic Traits in Distress Tolerance

It is believed that people with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) have a low tolerance for distress, which impairs their ability to persist in goal-directed behavior during aversive situations. The researchers then hypothesized that the opposite would be true and that psychopathic traits would have the opposite effect of ASPD and be linked with high levels of distress tolerance. The purpose of this research was to test this hypothesis.

The methodology of this research involved 107 (91 men and 16 women) treatment seeking individuals between the ages of 20 and 55 in a substance use residential treatment facility. They were recruited in their first week of treatment. They were given interviews to determine if they had a DSM-IV diagnosis. Then the subjects were given a Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT), which was used as a psychological stressor to measure distress tolerance. Participants were told that they would be paid for their performance on these tests. The researchers also used the Computerized Mirror-Tracing Persistence Task (MTPT-17C to measure distress tolerance. The researchers measured negative affect using a four-item scale consisting of self-reported anxiety, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and frustration.