Submitted by skinny2531 on 07/27/2009 03:09 PM Flag This Paper
Join Now
For centuries people have been getting tattoos for various reasons. Whatever the reason may be the permanence of tattoos seems to bring great satisfaction to those individuals who decide to get them. Tattoos are a form of expression and are personal. Their purpose may serve as a religious belief, status symbol, group associations, a form of punishment, or plain adornment (Kosut, 2000). New research has now suggested that there is a strong relationship between antisocial behavior and tattoos (Cardasis, 2008; Hamill, 2008). This research also suggests that there are other factors along with tattoos to increase the likelihood of developing antisocial personality disorder. For instance, psychiatric patients with tattoos are more likely to have antisocial personality disorder than those without them (Cardasis, 2008). Do people who get tattoos have antisocial personality disorder?
Tattoos
The word “tattoo†comes from the Tahitian word “tatu†which means “to mark something†(Sperry, 1991). They are created by marking beneath the skins surface with colored materials which then makes it permanent. Tattoos have been around for thousands of years. According to archaeological research tattoos could have been created by accident. For instance, an individual, centuries ago might have had a wound and rubbed it with their hand full of ashes from a fire and as a result the mark had become permanent. The earliest signs of tattoos was from a discovery in 1991 of the “Iceman†that was found in the Italian-Austrian border. The tattoo patterns that were found on his body showed that they were around 5,200 years old. The significance of these tattoos other than decorative reasons is unknown, but some researchers believe they were probably done for medical purposes.
Modern tattooing has become extremely popular especially with the younger population. Nowadays, the reasons for getting a tattoo depends from individual to individual, but they always seem...