HEART RATE AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF IMPULSIVE SENSATION SEEKING

• Author: J. RICHARD JENNINGS,FRANCES R. CHEN,ADRIAN RAINE,JILL PORTNOY,ROLF LOEBER,DUSTIN PARDINI
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12038
• Date: 01 May 2014
• Published date: 01 May 2014

HEART RATE AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR: THE

MEDIATING ROLE OF IMPULSIVE SENSATION

SEEKING

JILL PORTNOY,1,∗ADRIAN RAINE,2FRANCES R. CHEN,1

DUSTIN PARDINI,3ROLF LOEBER,3

and J. RICHARD JENNINGS4

1Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania

2Departments of Criminology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, University of

Pennsylvania

3Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

4Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Pittsburgh

KEYWORDS: heart rate, sensation seeking, aggression, delinquency, fearlessness

Although a low resting heart rate is considered the best-replicated biological corre-

late of antisocial behavior, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains largely

unknown. Sensation-seeking and fearlessness theories have been proposed to explain

this relationship, although little empirical research has been conducted to test these the-

ories. This study addressed this limitation by examining the relationship between heart

rate and antisocial behavior in a community sample of 335 adolescent boys. Heart

rate was measured during a series of cognitive, stress, and rest tasks. Participants also

completed self-report measures of state fear, impulsive sensation seeking, and both ag-

gressive and nonaggressive forms of antisocial behavior. As expected, increased levels

of aggression and nonviolent delinquency were associated with a low heart rate. Im-

pulsive sensation seeking, but not fearlessness, significantly mediated the association

between heart rate and aggression. This study is the first to show that impulsive sen-

sation seeking partly underlies the relationship between aggression and heart rate, and

it is one of the few to examine the mechanism of action linking heart rate to antiso-

cial behavior. Findings at a theoretical level highlight the role of impulsive sensation

seeking in understanding antisocial behavior and at an intervention level suggest it as

a potential target for behavioral change.

Autonomic nervous system activity has long been examined in relation to psychopa-

thy, aggression, and antisocial behavior (e.g., Davies and Maliphant, 1971; Hare, 1968).

Psychophysiological indices of autonomic activity, which are noninvasive to record and

capture nearly immediate physiological changes in response to external stimuli, include

skin conductance, heart rate, and skin-potential response. Of these measures, a low rest-

ing heart rate is considered the best-replicated biological correlate of antisocial behavior

in children and adolescents (Lorber, 2004; Ortiz and Raine, 2004). One meta-analysis

∗Direct correspondence to Jill Portnoy, Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylva-

nia, Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, 3809 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail:

jill@sas.upenn.edu).

C2014 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12038

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 52 Number 2 292–311 2014 292

HEART RATE AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR 293

of 45 independent effect sizes and a total of 5,868 children reported an effect size of

d=–.44 (p<.0001) for the relationship between resting heart rate and antisocial be-

havior (Ortiz and Raine, 2004). In another meta-analysis, Lorber (2004) found an effect

size of d=–.38 (p<.05) for studies of resting heart rate versus aggression. The rela-

tionship between low heart rate and antisocial behavior is unlikely to be the result of

artifact; several key variables—including body size, intelligence, exercise, and socioeco-

nomic status—have not been found to reduce the strength of this relationship substan-

tially (Raine, 2002). Despite this well-documented association between a low heart rate

and antisocial behavior, important gaps in our understanding of this relationship remain.

These gaps include a limited understanding of the mechanism linking heart rate to an-

tisocial behavior, as well as limitations in our understanding of the particular types of

antisocial behavior that are associated with heart rate. The purpose of this article is to

address these limitations.

MEDIATING MECHANISM

Perhaps surprisingly, given the large amount of research examining the heart rate–

antisocial behavior relationship, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains

largely unknown, although several theoretical explanations have been proposed. One

theoretical explanation, sensation-seeking theory, rests on the premise that a low resting

heart rate is a marker of low autonomic arousal (Raine, 2002). Low arousal is hypothe-

sized to be an unpleasant physiological state, leading those with low resting heart rates to

seek stimulating behaviors, including antisocial behaviors, to increase their level of phys-

iological arousal to a more optimal level (Quay, 1965; Raine, 2002). Despite its status as

a long-standing theory of antisocial behavior (Quay, 1965), the theory has been subjected

to little empirical verification.

An alternative interpretation of the heart rate–antisocial behavior relationship, fear-

lessness theory, recognizes that the testing situation during which heart rate is measured

may itself be at least mildly stressful. The “resting” states when heart rate is typically

monitored—usually a 2- to 3-minute period prior to the beginning of a series of exper-

imental tasks that are novel to the child in an unfamiliar laboratory setting—are likely

to contain a modest element of anticipatory anxiety. Additionally, the measurement of

heart rate often co-occurs with the administration of more stressful procedures, such as

exposure to aversive stimuli or participation in a stressor task. A low heart rate, there-

fore, may indicate a relative lack of fear in response to moderate stressors (Raine, 1993;

Venables, 1987). Fearlessness is thought to be related to antisocial behavior, as commit-

ting criminal and antisocial acts would be facilitated by a lack of fear regarding the antiso-

cial context and potential punishment if apprehended (Raine, 2002). Additionally, poor

fear conditioning and lack of anticipatory fear are well-replicated risk factors for antiso-

cial behavior (Gao et al., 2010; van Goozen et al., 2004). These findings suggest that a

relative lack of fear may underlie the heart rate–antisocial behavior relationship.

Most empirical support for the sensation-seeking and fearlessness theoretical interpre-

tations has been indirect. For example, in one sample, fearlessness, stimulation seeking,

and having a low resting heart rate at 3 years of age predicted aggression at 11 years of

age (Raine et al., 1998; Raine, Venables, and Mednick, 1997). Recently, a novel study

provided a more direct test of these explanations (Sijtsema et al., 2010). Resting heart

rate was measured in a sample of males and females at age 11 years, and antisocial be-

havior was measured at age 16 years. Resting heart rate was not associated with antisocial