Date of Award

Spring 5-6-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Psychology

College

College of Science

First Advisor

Andrew M Terranova

Abstract/Description

There are many risk factors for antisocial behaviors. For example, birth order has been linked to personality traits, such as aggression and stubbornness (Fagan & Najman, 2003), and these personality traits have been identified as risk factors for antisocial behaviors, such as callousness (lack of empathy and emotionality) and psychopathy (personality traits associated with being a psychopath; e.g., Frick & White, 2008). These traits can be found in sibling interactions and are correlated with birth order (Odudu et. al, 2020), as well as with college majors when including Machiavellianism (Tang & Chen, 2008). Using Paul Frick’s work on studying callous and unemotional traits that can lead to antisocial personality traits, multiple different subscales were used to examine how differences in birth order (eg. oldest children vs. middle and youngest children), college major (eg. business vs. social science majors, or male vs female psychology majors), and personality traits (e.g., lack of empathy and emotionality, unethical behavior, and aggressiveness) relate to antisocial behavior levels in 83 college students (M age= 19.16, 72.3% female, 84.3% white). Findings indicated that none of these traits were statistically significant in any of the subgroups. Further research can be used to analyze how these traits are affected by birth order, and why or if they may lead to a specific college major.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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