The quest for excitement: a missing link between personality disorder and violence?

Abstract

Despite its relative neglect by most emotion theorists, excitement has been found to be an important motive for criminal, and particularly violent, offending in young men. Exceptionally, reversal theory (Apter, M.J. (2007b). Reversal theory: The dynamics of motivation, emotion and personality (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oneworld Publications.) regards the quest for excitement as a powerful motive for human behaviour, including antisocial behaviour. The quest for excitement, manifesting as a desire to inflict harm and suffering on others, is prevalent in the dissocial domain of personality disorders and is arguably most prominent in those showing traits of ‘meanness’ and ‘disinhibition’ (Patrick, C. (2010). Conceptualizing the psychopathic personality: Disinhibited, bold…or just plain mean? In D.R. Lynam & R.J. Salekin (Eds.), Handbook of child and adolescent psychopathy (pp. 15–48). New York: Guilford Press.). Violence motivated by the desire for excitement is often facilitated by drug or alcohol use, overrides whatever feelings of empathy individuals might have for their victims, and represents a failure of emotion regulation characterised by an inability to down-regulate positive emotional states such as excitement and exhilaration. A quadripartite typology of violence is described which is intended as a working hypothesis and a framework to guide future research focusing on motivations for violent offending.

Keywords:

• excitement
• personality disorder
• violence
• motivation

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Michael Apter for reading and commenting on an early draft of this paper.

Notes

1. ‘Negativism’ is the term used in reversal theory, but its close synonym, ‘rebelliousness’, is used here since it is more comprehensible to the average reader.

2. For ease of exposition, this is somewhat simplified, since in reversal theory, arousal seeking is a key facet of a broader playful (‘paratelic’) motivational state, which is contrasted with a serious-minded (‘telic’) state: see Apter (2007b).

3. An example of this is the sudden transformation the author experienced some years ago when, in a state of gleeful excitement, he approached the rope bridge that traverses a 23 m-deep and 20 m-wide chasm separating the Antrim coast in Northern Ireland from Carrick-a-Rede island. Once on the rope bridge, and with his protective frame removed, the state of pleasant excitement was transformed instantaneously into a state of paralysing and incapacitating fear.

4. In collaboration with Dr. Gunnar Bjornebekk, the Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development.