Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T22:25:05.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

38 - Applying Evolutionary Principles to Criminality

from Part IX - Applying Evolutionary Principles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2020

By
Sandie Taylor  and
Lance Workman
Edited by
Lance Workman ,
Will Reader  and
Jerome H. Barkow
Lance Workman
Affiliation:
University of South Wales
Will Reader
Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
Jerome H. Barkow
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, we consider how developments in evolutionary theory might be applied to help us understand why some people gravitate toward criminal behavior. Sociologists generally explain the emergence of criminal behavior in terms of responses to unfavorable societal factors. In contrast, social and developmental psychologists explain such behavior as the outcome of the interaction between individual differences and a challenging rearing environment. Evolutionary psychologists, however, bring a whole new perspective to the problem of criminality (Taylor & Workman, 2019). They suggest that evolutionary principles such as kin selection theory, reciprocation, sexual selection, and parental investment theory can provide powerful tools to help explain criminality. Before considering how these principles might be applied, we need first to explore what is meant by the concept of “criminality.”.

Defining criminality and, in particular, what encapsulates criminal behavior is far from straightforward. For a definition of what constitutes criminal behavior and criminality as an underlying cognitive and personality dimension, it is appropriate to adopt a legal approach.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior , pp. 471 - 480
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Al-Rodhan, N. R. F. (2008). Emotional Amoral Egoism: A Neurophilosophical Theory of Human Nature and Its Universal Security Implications. Zurich: Lit Verlag.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.Google Scholar
Archer, J. (2004). Sex differences in aggression in real-world settings: A meta-analytic review. Review of General Psychology, 8, 291–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archer, J. (2013). Can evolutionary principles explain patterns of family violence? Psychological Bulletin, 138, 403–440.Google Scholar
Barkow, J. H. (1989). Darwin, Sex and Status: Biological Approaches to mind and Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belsky, J. (2016). The differential susceptibility hypothesis: Sensitivity to the environment for better and for worse. JAMA Pediatrics, 170(4), 321–322.Google Scholar
Blackstone, W. (1765–1769). Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765–1769, Vol. 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bourgeois, C., & Fisher, M. (2018). More bro’s, more woes? A look at the prevalence of coalitions in crimes of robbery. Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 12(2), 126–131.Google Scholar
Boyd, N. (2000). The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent. Vancouver: Greystone Books.Google Scholar
Brunner, H. G., Nelen, M., Breakefield, X. O., Ropers, H. H., & van Oost, B. A. (1993). Abnormal behaviour associated with a point mutation in the structural gene for monoamine oxidase A. Science, 262(5133), 578–580.Google Scholar
Buades-Rotger, M., & Gallardo-Pujol, D. (2014). The role of the monoamine oxidase A gene in moderating the response to adversity and associated antisocial behavior: A review. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 7, 185–200.Google Scholar
Buller, D. J. (2005). Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Buss, D. M. (2009). How can evolutionary psychology successfully explain personality and individual differences? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 359–366.Google Scholar
Campbell, A. (1999). Staying alive: Evolution, culture, and women’s intrasexual aggression. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 203–214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cartwight, J. (2016). Evolution and Human Behaviour: Darwinian Perspectives on the Human Condition, 3rd ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Caspi, A., McClay, J., Moffitt, T. E., et al. (2002). Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children. Science, 297, 851–854.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coccaro, E. F., Beresford, B., Minar, P., Kaskow, J., & Geracioti, T. (2007). CSF testosterone: Relationship to aggression, impulsivity, and venturesomeness in adult males with personality disorder. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 41(6), 488–492.Google Scholar
Coid, J., Yang, M., Roberts, A., et al. (2006a). Violence and psychiatric morbidity in a national household population – A report from the British Household Survey. American Journal of Epidemiology, 164(12), 1199–1208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coid, J., Yang, M., Tyrer, P., Roberts, A., & Ullrich, S. (2006b). Prevalence and correlates of personality disorder in Great Britain. British Journal of Psychiatry, 188, 423–431.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Craig, M. C., Catani, M., Deeley, Q., et al. (2009). Altered connections on the road to psychopathy. Molecular Psychiatry, 14, 946–953.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1988). Homicide. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1998). The truth about Cinderella: A Darwinian View of Parental Love. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (2005). The “Cinderella effect” is no fairy tale. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 507–508.Google Scholar
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (2007). Is the “Cinderella Effect” controversial? In Crawford, C. & Krebs, D. L., eds., Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 383–400.Google Scholar
Davis, M. S. (2006). Criminal mala in se: An equity-based definition. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 17(3), 270–289.Google Scholar
Decuyper, M., De Fruyt, F., & Buschman, J. (2008). A five-factor model perspective on psychopathy and comorbid Axis-II disorders in a forensic–psychiatric sample. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 31(5), 394–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolan, M. (2004). Psychopathic personality in young people. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 10, 466–473.Google Scholar
Dugdale, R. L. (1877). The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, and Heredity. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Dustin, R. R., & Alcock, J. (2018). Animal Behavior, 11th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.Google Scholar
Dutton, K. (2012). The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us about Success. New York: Scientific American.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fallon, J. (2013). The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain. Shelton, CT: Current Publishing.Google Scholar
Fallon, J. (2014). The Psychopath Inside. New York: Penguin Group.Google Scholar
Fazel, S., & Danesh, J. (2002). Serious mental disorder in 23000 prisoners: A systematic review of 62 surveys. Lancet, 359(9306), 545–550.Google Scholar
Frodi, A., Dernevik, M., Sepa, A., Philipson, J., & Bragesjo, M. (2001). Current attachment representations of incarcerated offenders varying in degree of psychopathy. Attachment and Human Development, 3, 269–283.Google Scholar
Gao, Y., Raine, A., Chan, F., Venables, P. H., & Mednick, S. A. (2010). Early maternal and paternal bonding, childhood physical abuse and adult psychopathic personality. Psychological Medicine, 40(6), 1007–1016.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ge, X., Conger, R. D., Cadoret, R. J., et al. (1996). The developmental interface between nature and nurture: A mutual influence model of child antisocial behaviour and parent behaviours. Developmental Psychology, 32, 574–589.Google Scholar
Gibson, M. A., & Lawson, D. W. (2015). Applying evolutionary anthropology. Evolutionary Anthropology, 24(1), 3–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glenn, A. I., Kurzban, R., & Raine, A. (2011). Evolutionary theory and psychopathy. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 16, 371–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, H. L., Baird, A. A., & End, A. (2004). Functional differences among those high and low on a trait measure of psychopathy. Biological Psychiatry, 56, 516–521.Google Scholar
Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment. Science, 293(5537), 2105–2108.Google Scholar
Guo, G., Ou, X.-M., Roettger, M., & Shih, J. C. (2008). The VNTR 2-repeat in MAOA and delinquent behaviour in adolescence and young adulthood: Associations and MAOA promoter activity. European Journal of Human Genetics, 16(5), 626–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagerty, B. B. (2010). Inside a psychopath’s brain: The sentencing debate. NPR. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128116806.Google Scholar
Hare, R. D., & Neumann, C. S. (2006). The PCL-R assessment of psychopathy. In Patrick, C. J., ed., Handbook of Psychopathy. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 58–88.Google Scholar
Hauser, M. D., Cushman, F. A., Young, L., Kang-Xing, K., & Mikhail, J. (2007). A dissociation between moral judgements and justifications. Mind and Language, 22(1), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauser, M. D., Young, L., & Cushman, F. A. (2008). Reviving Rawl’s linguistic analogy. In Sinnott-Armstrong, W, ed., Moral Psychology, Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 107–143.Google Scholar
Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, 1982 reprint. New York: Viking Press.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, S. (2009). Evolutionary psychology and crime. In Walsh, A. & Beaver, K. M., eds., Biosocial Criminology: New Directions in Theory and Research. New York: Routledge, pp. 90–110.Google Scholar
Kanazawa, S., & Still, M. C. (2000). Why men commit crimes (and why they desist). Sociological Theory, 18(3), 434–437.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1996). Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1998). Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(10), 389–398.Google Scholar
Kiehl, K. A., Smith, A. M., Hare, R. D., et al. (2001). Limbic abnormalities in affective processing by criminal psychopaths as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Biological Psychiatry, 50, 677–684.Google Scholar
Krebs, D. L. (1998). The evolution of moral behaviour. In Crawford, C. & Krebs, D. L., eds., Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues, and Applications. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 337–368.Google Scholar
Krebs, D. L. (2011). The Origins of Morality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Larsson, H., Andershed, H., & Lichtenstein, P. (2006). A genetic factor explains most of the variation in the psychopathic personality. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115(2), 221–230.Google Scholar
Lyons, M. J., True, W. R., Eisen, S. A., et al. (1995). Differential heritability of adult and juvenile antisocial traits. Archives of General Psychiatry, 52, 906–915.Google Scholar
McDermott, R., Tingley, D., Cowden, J., Frazzetto, G., & Johnston, D. D. P. (2009). Monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) predicts behavioural aggression following provocation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 2118–2123.Google Scholar
McGuire, J. (2004). Understanding Psychology and Crime: Perspectives on Theory and Action. Maidenhead: Open University Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, M., & Troisi, A. (1998). Darwinian Psychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mealey, L. (1995). Primary sociopathy (psychopathy) is a type, secondary is not. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 19, 579–599.Google Scholar
Mealey, L. (2005). Evolutionary psychopathology and abnormal development. In Burgess, R. L. & MacDonald, K., eds., Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 381–406.Google Scholar
Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., McClearn, G. E., & McGuffin, P. (2008). Behavioural Genetics, 4th ed. New York: Worth Publishers.Google Scholar
Raine, A. (2002). The biological basis of crime. In Wilson, J. Q. & Petersilia, J., eds., Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control. Oakland, CA: ICS Press, pp. 43–74.Google Scholar
Ruse, M., & Wilson, E. (1985). The evolution of morality. New Scientist, 1478, 108–128.Google Scholar
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Harari, H., Aharon-Peretz, J., & Levkovitz, Y. (2010). The role of the orbitofrontal cortex in affective theory of mind deficits in criminal offenders with psychopathic tendencies. Cortex, 46(5), 668–677.Google Scholar
Silk, J. B. (1980). Adoption and kinship in Oceania. American Anthropologist, 82, 799–820.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silk, J. B. (1990). Human adoption in evolutionary perspective. Human Nature, 1, 25–52.Google Scholar
Taylor, S. (2016). Crime and Criminality: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Abington: Routledge.Google Scholar
Taylor, S., & Workman, L. (2019). The evolution of crime. In Shackelford, T. K. & Weekes-Shackelford, V. A., eds., Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3209-1.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. L. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In Campbell, B., ed., Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man. Chicago, IL: Aldine, pp. 139–179.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. L. (1985). Social Evolution. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.Google Scholar
Troisi, A. (2015). The evolutionary diagnosis of mental disorder. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 6(3), 323–331.Google Scholar
Troisi, A., & McGuire, M. T. (2000). Psychotherapy in the context of Darwin psychiatry. In Gilbert, P. & Bailey, K. G., eds., Genes on the Couch: Explorations in Evolutionary Psychotherapy. London: Routledge, pp. 28–41.Google Scholar
Van Vugt, M. (2009). Sex differences in intergroup competition, aggression, and warfare: The male warrior hypothesis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 124–134.Google Scholar
Wild, S. E., ed. (2010). Webster’s New World Law Dictionary. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.Google Scholar
Workman, L., & Reader, W. (2014). Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yang, Y., Raine, A., Narr, K. L., Colletti, P., & Toga, A. W. (2009). Localisation of deformations within the amygdala in individuals with psychopathy. Archives of General Psychiatry, 66, 986–994.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×