Is Avoidant Personality Disorder heritable or is it caused by environmental factors?
Tillfors, Furmark, Ekselius & Fredrikson (2001) have found that there is an increased rate of positive parental history of excessive social anxiety in those diagnosed with Social Phobia or Avoidant Personality Disorder. Those with an affected family member have a two- to three-fold increase for both disorders (Tillfors, Furmark, Ekselius & Fredrikson, 2001). Roles of genetics and shared environmental factors are unclear. Temperamentally inhibited children are born with a lower threshold for limbic-hypothalamic arousal to unexpected changes in the environment (Kagan, Reznick & Snidman, 1988). Millon (1981) has found that Avoidant personalities often identify with and find models in socially ineffective and non-assertive parents or parental figures. Sociocultural Explanation: Evidence for socially acquired Avoidant Personality Disorder Repeated exposure to “explicit or implicit rejection, humiliation, or denigration…produce(s) affective dysphoria, cognitive interference, alienated self-i
