Integrating Criminology Through Adaptive Strategy and Life History Theory

Abstract

Criminological theories tend to explain street crime as either a reaction to personal deficiencies or a reaction to inequality and injustice. Using adaptive strategy and life history theory, this article seeks to unite these explanations of crime under the biosocial umbrella. It incorporates the psychology of crime, tying traits implicated in low self-control, psychopathy, and mating effort to antisocial strategies and discusses how strategies based on low self-control and psychopathy may be promoted or controlled. It further applies adaptive strategy theory to nonstreet crime, with the aim of bringing critical and biosocial criminology closer together.

Keywords

Adaptive strategies biosocial criminology evolution and crime antisocial strategies low self-control psychopathy white-collar crime

Is crime a human invention or a natural behavior? At least among children, crime appears to be a natural product of inherent selfishness. The self-control perspective emphasizes that left to themselves, children lie, cheat, steal, assault, and disturb the peace with regularity (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; see also Trembley, 2000). These behaviors are nearly universally abhorred—even neglectful parents would rather their children behaved than misbehaved, because well-behaved children require less attention. Much parenting involves the often unrewarding process of “breaking the colts,” trying to get essentially wild but incredibly resourceful animals to, at the very least, do what they are told and not hurt anyone.

Yet, despite our best efforts, crime endures. Various criminological theories have attempted to explain its persistence. Theories that focus on the individual, like self-control and other developmental theories, tend to portray adult crime as the result of dysfunction in childhood, with risk factors distributed among environmental causes such as inadequate parents or biological causes such as hyperactivity combined with attention deficits (Lynam, 1996). Moffitt’s two-stream model (1993) combines these perspectives, stating that the most serious and persistent offenders will be those in which poor parenting or other environmental risk factors intersect with “neuropsychological deficits” (p. 680). In either case, delinquency and later crime, results when the individual lacks sufficient cognitive, emotional, and behavioral resources to be able to recognize and take advantage of the benefits that accrue to people who play by the rules—who succeed in school, stay out of trouble, and take their obligations seriously. In this view, delinquency that is limited to adolescence is of no lasting consequence, because it does not substantially interfere with the individual’s eventual ability to fit into society.

In contrast, theories from sociological criminology tend to portray crime as the inevitable result of economic, political, racial, or gender inequality, oppression, and injustice. In this view, crime is an adaptation to otherwise untenable circumstances, to make the best of a bad situation. Thus, a socially- or economically-disadvantaged adolescent may choose not to strive to conform to society’s rules and expectations, because to do so would be to accept injustice and thereby further the status quo.

It would seem that individual- and societal-level explanations of crime are incompatible at a basic level, because they differ in their conception of justice. To the individualist, the criminal and juvenile justice systems are instruments of socialization, whereas to the social theorist, they are inherently oxymoronic. Despite this difference, they have much in common. In both cases, crime is considered voluntary behavior, the behavior of a moral agent (Aranella, 1992). General theories about crime do not concern the criminally insane, whose offenses obviously result from idiosyncratic cognitions or impulses produced by mental illness, but rather “normal” crime: The crime committed by individuals in pursuit of goals, such as sex, money, power, status, or revenge, that most of us can relate to. Furthermore, whether the product of dysfunctional parenting, brain deficits, or the perception that conventional routes to success are foreclosed, or a combination of these, criminal acts, though often heinous, are understandable. They involve the pursuit of self-interest through “force, fraud, or stealth” (Vila, 1994, p. 316), resulting in unjustified gains at the expense of others (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990).

At its basic level, crime is a way of getting what one wants, occurring when its perceived rewards outweigh its perceived costs. When the justice system labels someone a chronic offender, it identifies an individual whose general approach to fulfilling his or her needs often results in harm to others or to society in general. In other words, it has identified an individual who tends to employ an antisocial strategy when pursuing his or her self-interest. Sociocultural and individualistic explanations for how individuals adopt this kind of strategy tend to emphasize one level of analysis or another (Cohen & Machalek, 1988), but an approach rooted in biosocial criminology can help bring these research traditions together (Walsh, 2002).

Overview of the Article

This article seeks to integrate individualist and sociogenic explanations of crime using the overlapping biosocial constructs of adaptive strategies and life history theory. Adaptive strategy theory systematically deals with the observation that crime is generally goal-directed and occurs across cultures (see Ellis, 1990; Rowe, 1997), whereas life history theory examines social and perceptual cues for the unconscious adoption of various strategies (Hill, Ross, & Low, 1997). For the purposes of this article, only adaptive strategies that can be broadly dichotomized as antisocial/prosocial will be examined. This article will discuss various ways in which antisocial strategies, and the people who employ them, have been characterized and will demonstrate how most mainstream criminological theories are compatible with one form or another of the adaptive strategy perspective. The article also incorporates the psychology of crime, tying traits implicated in low self-control, psychopathy, and mating effort to antisocial strategies, and discusses how strategies based on low self-control and psychopathy may be promoted or controlled.

In conjunction with this integrative effort, this article will note that the most common manifestations of adaptive strategy theory focus exclusively on street crime, primarily crime committed by the dysfunctional, damaged, or underprivileged. Following Cohen & Machalek (1988), this article distinguishes between antisocial strategies based on competitive disadvantage and those based on competitive advantage. Although the disadvantage model better fits most criminological theories, the advantage model helps explain nonstreet (occupational, white-collar, corporate, and organized) crime, arising out of power rather than want (Cohen & Machalek, 1988), as well as other crimes committed by psychopaths with high self-control. The application of a biosocial perspective to nonstreet crime should facilitate its acceptance by persons disposed toward cultural and sociogenic explanations for crime.

Prosocial Emotions, Antisocial Strategies

The statement, “Crime is a way to get what one wants,” implies an intriguing question: Why do we want what we want? The biosocial perspective, through evolutionary theory, leads to a useful answer. As a social species, our individual survival and reproduction depends in large part on cooperation with other individuals. Over time, our interactions have gotten more complex and our lives more interdependent because of the phenomenon of synergy, which results when the product of our interactions exceeds the sum of our individual contributions. Society, whether among humans or other animals, evolved and endures only because, on the whole, it benefits its members through cooperation, the division of labor, the sharing of risks, and the resultant synergy (Ridley, 1996; Wright, 2000). Though more beneficial overall, social living is more complex than living in isolation. To reproduce successfully (or otherwise see their genes carried to the next generation), individuals have to solve several “adaptive problems,” including (a) successful intrasexual competition, (b) mate selection, (c) successful conception, (d) mate retention, (e) reciprocal dyadic alliance formation, (f) coalition-building and maintenance, (g) parental care and socialization, and (h) extra-parental kin investment (Buss, 1991, p. 465). We want what will help us solve these problems. We want friendship, sex, love, resources, status, allies, respect, a group identity, children, warm relationships with our family, respect from our mate, and so forth. We also want to protect ourselves from harm and take revenge on those we believe have wronged us (Baumeister, 1997; Duntley & Shackleford, 2008). As there is not one path to fitness, our desires often conflict—pursuing a particular potential mate, for example, might upset a reciprocal dyadic alliance (friendship), especially if the friend would seek revenge.

By the process of natural selection, humans have evolved intrinsic emotional biases, as well as the ability to reason, that help us solve adaptive problems in a social context (Sanderson, 2001). This means the primarily prosocial among us want not only sex, but also love, and care about family members, especially our children (Hrdy, 1999). Most of us, anti- or prosocial, attend to status and reputation (Baumeister, 1997; Nesbitt & Cohen, 1996), irrelevant phenomena within a nonsocial species. Most of us want economic and tangible resources and to employ them to solve adaptive problems. These biases help us maintain a climate of cooperation: We understand fairness and justice at the gut level (Wilson, 1993), and feel angry when cheated and proud and/or bonded as a result of successful cooperation (Nesse, 1990). Taken together, our social emotions—those that are relevant only in a social context, such as guilt, shame, empathy, sympathy, love, and gratitude—facilitate prosocial interactions and prevent antisocial acts. Thus, the majority of individuals will, in a well-functioning society, pursue a prosocial “adaptive strategy,” defined as an “organized set of behaviors designed to maximize individual reproductive success over the lifespan” (Rowe, 1996, p. 269). Strategies themselves seem to evolve over time, so that consistent approaches to anti- and prosocial behavior may be observed across individuals (Cohen & Machalek, 1988). It follows that individuals without fully developed social emotions, such as primary psychopaths, will carry a heightened risk for criminal offending (Mealey, 1995; Wiebe, 2009).

These socially relevant biases do not determine our behavior, only influence it. Our emotional flexibility, responsiveness to the environment, especially during development, and reasoning ability allow us to tailor our desires, perceptions, and strategies to our particular cultural context (Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Unlike, say, peacocks, we do not have a single pan-specific “courtship dance.” Instead, our path to fitness depends on interactions among cultural, personal, and life history factors.

Multiple routes to fitness invite psychological and behavioral diversity. Despite this diversity, however, it is possible to view both strategies and individuals through a bifurcated lens: antisocial versus prosocial. Antisocial behaviors, often produced in the (most often unconscious) pursuit of antisocial strategies, are those that unjustifiably undermine the fitness of others in one’s own social group (Rowe, 2002). This is the same thing as defining crime as “force, fraud, or stealth in the pursuit of self-interest,” but in an evolutionary context. Although the word “antisocial” has negative connotations, it is important to note that, from nature’s perspective, neither strategy is preferred, as both can be reproductively viable (Figueredo et al., 2006).

What force, fraud, and stealth have in common is that they describe some person (or institution) getting something valuable from, or doing something harmful to, someone else within their group without their consent. So long as the victim is blameless, the act is a crime (Ellis, 1990). Although there are crimes that lie outside this definition, such as vice or “victimless” crimes and political crimes, crimes that involve force, fraud, or stealth, whether directed against specific victims or more amorphous targets (think of insider trading or illegal dumping of toxic waste) represent acts committed in pursuance of antisocial strategies.

Cheating Versus Cooperating

Antisocial strategies arise because of the nature of society, which is inextricably linked with synergy. Most social interactions are conducted in a general atmosphere of trust and cooperation, where the interests of both parties are accounted for and lunch is not free. But cooperation brings the temptation to cheat, and cheating can, under many circumstances, benefit the cheater at no cost to him- or herself (Axelrod, 1984). Cheating is self-limited, however: If everyone cheated, soon nobody would cooperate (Raine, 1993), with two main consequences. First, the opportunity to cheat would disappear, and second, society would cease to exist, because social interactions would no longer be synergistic. Cheating is therefore a “frequency-dependent” strategy, which can persist indefinitely, albeit to a limited extent, in a population of cooperators (Mealey, 1995). Its extent is limited because, by its nature, it undermines synergy, thereby devouring or dissolving its host.

Mating Effort Versus Parenting Effort and Related Constructs

To identify cheating and cooperating as strategies requires only game theory, not a biosocial analysis. How do the concepts of cheating and cooperating, with their anthropomorphic connotations, apply to, and derive from, to the nonhuman world? The short answer is that human behavior, like the behavior of any other organism, must necessarily arise in the context of natural selection, where the bottom line is fitness. Consequently, another Darwinian approach is to examine the allocation of reproductive effort—the amount of mental and physical resources dedicated to successful reproduction (Rowe, 1996)—and to characterize crime and delinquency as epiphenomena of an adaptive strategy based on mating effort (Harpending & Draper, 1988; Rushton, 1985). Mating effort involves “the time and energy devoted to finding a mate and protecting him or her from rivals” and is contrasted with parenting effort, “the care invested in rearing young” (Rowe, 1996, p. 270). In this view, traits associated with mating effort—impulsivity, preference for novelty, a strong sex drive, a focus on the present rather than the future, a lack of strong emotional attachments, and interpersonal aggression against rivals—also promote crime (Rowe, 1996). The contrast between mating and parenting effort is often mentioned in connection with “r/K selection,” in which r-selection describes ecological conditions under which high reproductive rates, short lifespans, and short birth intervals, together with their related traits, confer fitness, whereas K-selection represents the parenting effort end of the continuum, where devoting comparatively large amounts of resources to comparatively few offspring is rewarded (Rowe, 1996, p. 302). Mating effort and parenting effort are often associated with low and high parental investment; high mating effort almost guarantees low parental investment (see Brumbach, Figueredo, & Ellis, 2009). Lending plausibility to the mating effort model, the connection between promiscuous sex and crime has long been established empirically (Harris, Rice, Hilton, Lalumiere, & Quinsey, 2007).

Concepts similar to mating/parenting effort or r/K selection have been described under life history theory: A continuum from “fast” to “slow” life history strategies (Kaplan & Gangestad, 2005; Promislow & Harvey, 1990). At the slow end, corresponding to K-selection and parenting effort, the interests of existing individuals are prioritized over new mating opportunities (Figueredo et al., 2006). As Figueredo and colleagues (2006) note, each end of the fast/slow continuum is associated with clusters of traits:

Within modern society, these low-K characteristics could manifest as impulsivity, short-term thinking, promiscuity, low female parental investment, little or no male parental investment, little social support, disregard for social rules, and extensive risk-taking (Bogaert & Rushton, 1989; Ellis, 1988; Figueredo et al., 2005d; Rushton, 1985, 1987; Geary, 2002; Rushton & Bogaert, 1988; Thornhill & Palmer, 2004). The core psychological characteristics at the high end of the Differential K continuum entail long-term considerations, selective mating, and high parental investment. Within modern society, these high-K characteristics could manifest as long-term thinking, monogamy, extensive parental investment, substantial social support structures, adherence to social rules (e.g., cooperation, altruism), and careful consideration of risks. (p. 246)

Other Conceptual Schemes: Predator Versus Prey, Parasite Versus Host

Another way to characterize the antisocial strategy is to portray its most extreme employers as predators. According to Hare (1996), psychopaths are

intraspecies predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they cold-bloodedly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt. (p. 26)

As noted above, psychopaths are thought to be deficient in the social emotions (Mealey, 1995). The predator model does not describe all antisocial persons: Not all criminals are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are criminals (Cleckley, 1941; Patrick, 1994; Widom, 1977). For the purposes of this article, “psychopath” will be used to denote a person with primary psychopathy—the remorseless, guiltless manipulator of Hare’s definition—who may or may not have low self-control as well (Patrick, 1994; Wiebe, 2003).

Finally, it can be useful to consider antisocial persons as parasites on the host society. Like parasites, criminals produce nothing of value and live off of the resources of others. Baumeister (1997) has described the phenomenon of the “magnitude gap,” based on the observation that in nearly all successful criminal interactions, the victim loses more than the perpetrator gains, not only economically but also psychologically and temporally, too—the rewards of crime generally are less intense and do not last as long as the pain and injuries suffered by victims. The magnitude gap is simply the distance between what the perpetrator’s gains and the victim’s losses. The magnitude gap illustrates how crime undermines synergy and, by implication, society itself: Just as prosocial interactions are necessary to keep society’s resources growing, antisocial interactions inexorably diminish the pool of available resources. If everyone is a thief, there is soon nothing left to steal.

Who Pursues Antisocial Strategies? The Competitive Disadvantage Model

Now that the strategies and some of the traits associated with them have been described, a salient question for criminology becomes: Which individuals end up pursuing antisocial strategies?

The most prominent set of explanations center on the idea of “competitive disadvantage” (Figueredo & McCloskey, 1993). Researchers have approached this notion from a number of different angles, but the basic idea is this: Prosocial solutions to adaptive problems are generally more rewarding than antisocial solutions, because they tend to produce synergy and leave the door open for future interactions. Antisocial solutions are riskier, less reliable, and generally less successful. Therefore, one doesn’t pursue an antisocial strategy, whether it be crime or domestic violence, unless one is unable to compete in the prosocial arena.

Competitive disadvantage can arise a number of ways. The first relates to individual traits. The same traits that signal low mate quality also signal low quality for an employee or a trusted friend, so the competitively disadvantaged individual has a hard time not only attracting and retaining mates but also securing gainful employment and meaningful relationships. Many of the core traits of mating effort and low self-control, for example—risk seeking and a desire for variety, impulsivity, self-centeredness, shortsightedness and present orientation, little interest in or preparation for a career, and a lack of diligence (see Rowe, 1996; Wiebe, 2003)—produce neither a faithful, loving spouse nor a productive, reliable employee. Overall, a person with low self-control tends to attempt to satisfy immediate desires regardless of the costs to others or to his or her own future interests (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990).

Other traits besides those subsumed within low self-control and mating effort can place individuals at a competitive disadvantage, such as physical unattractiveness (Figueredo & McCloskey, 1993) and low intelligence (see Hirschi & Hindelang, 1977; Kanazawa, 2009; Rowe, Vaszonyi, & Figueredo, 1997). According to Kanazawa, general intelligence developed in response to evolutionarily novel situations and problems. Thus, the less intelligent may be far less competitive, and, therefore, more likely to offend, in a modern complex society than in a more predictable culture with a less diverse array of niches (Cohen, Vila, & Machalek, 1995). Moffitt’s (1993) two-stream theory, distinguishing between adolescent-limited and life-course persistent offenders, can also be seen as an individual-level competitive disadvantage model, as the basis for persistent offending is thought to be neuropsychological deficits in areas such as memory, verbal and spatial intelligence, mental flexibility, and visual-motor dexterity (Moffitt, Lynam, & Silva, 1994), deficits that hinder an individual’s efforts to contribute to, and therefore benefit from, synergy (you don’t get paid if you don’t work). Along with consistent empirical findings that connect crime to low self-control, mating effort, and low intelligence, support for the competitive disadvantage model can be seen in prisons, where rates of illiteracy, school dropout, and mental illness far exceed societal averages (Petersilia, 2003), although prison may house many of the less-competent criminals.

Competitive disadvantage can have economic as well as personal roots (Cohen & Machalek, 1988; Figueredo & McCloskey, 1993). Whereas persons may self-select into poverty, much poverty is simply not the individual’s fault (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Merton, 1938). Therefore, the competitive disadvantage model is compatible with numerous sociological theories, such as strain, anomie, and Marxist and other conflict theories. Strain theory, in fact, places competitive disadvantage at the center of crime causation: If an individual’s path to conventional success by conventional (prosocial) means is blocked, that individual may “innovate” (e.g., pursue an alternate strategy) to achieve success (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960).

Another sociological theory that accords with the competitive disadvantage hypothesis, as well as with self-control and mating effort, is Walter Miller’s (1958) focal concerns theory. Life at the bottom of society is not easy, so males, especially, have to be concerned with trouble (trying to stay out of it, handling it when it comes), toughness, smartness (street smarts), excitement, fate (the belief that the future is out of your hands), and autonomy (independence and resistance to authority) (Walsh & Ellis, 2007). Because addressing these concerns allows the lower-class individual to successfully negotiate his or her environment, it is implicitly an adaptive strategy theory. Furthermore, these concerns map directly onto traits associated with mating effort, and as it is a theory about delinquency within the lower classes, it is a theory of competitive disadvantage.

Another set of criminological theories that fit within the disadvantage model are subcultural, social learning, and differential association theories (see Akers, 1996). As Miller notes, delinquent groups can be seen as a product of collective disadvantage. Groups that do not expect conventional success from their members and that construct rationalizations and neutralizations that support offending help ease the sting of both economic and personal disadvantage, and allow their members to comfortably continue low levels of self-control, including present-orientation and a lack of diligence.

Another manifestation of the competitive disadvantage hypothesis is the well-established connection between youth and crime (Walsh, 2009). It is clear that young people have fewer resources than older people (as well as lower self-control), and so tend to take more risks to acquire resources and mating opportunities (Kanazawa & Still, 2000). These risks may entail expropriative crime, physical or sexual assaults, contests with rivals, or just showing off.

An Alternate Path to Offending: Competitive Advantage

The competitive disadvantage model seems to explain a good deal of crime, and to unite theories from self-control to strain. However, crime can also arise from competitive advantage (Cohen & Machalek, 1988; Sutherland, 1949). If you have enough power you can get away with anything (see Machiavelli, 1514/1961), especially if you have high self-control and a quiet conscience. One factor that can quiet the conscience is physical and psychological distance from crime victims. Not having to face their victims’ suffering directly, the white-collar or corporate criminal can harm with alacrity. In fact, many elite crimes, such as insider trading, bribery, price fixing, and tax evasion, have no readily identifiable victims at all. The conscience can also be quieted through the use of techniques of neutralization (Sykes & Matza, 1957). Should they be confronted with the harm they have caused, nonstreet criminals, likely well-educated and cognitively functional and often with a sense of entitlement that street criminals lack (Shover & Hochstetler, 2006), can often easily and convincingly, at least to themselves, neutralize their feelings of guilt (Benson, 1985; Shover & Hochstetler, 2006). Finally, if the individual is a primary psychopath, he/she probably lacks a conscience in the first place.

The traits that relate to the competitive advantage path differ from those relating to competitive disadvantage. Instead of the impulsivity and present-orientation of low self-control, “advantage” traits constitute the following components of primary psychopathy: low empathy, guilt, and remorse; solipsism and egocentricity; the unwillingness to take responsibility; a deceitful and manipulative interpersonal style; and generally shallow interpersonal affect (Harpur, Hart, & Hakstian, 1989). Taken together, these traits describe an individual who guiltlessly manipulates others and never truly admits to wrongdoing, whose unjustified sense of self-worth provides a sense of entitlement, and who never allows the rights of feelings of others to trump self-interest.

In sum, the competitive disadvantage model describes an etiological pathway leading from low self-control to an antisocial strategy, whereas the competitive advantage model describes two routes to antisociality. One is from primary psychopathy, but only among psychopaths with reasonably high self-control as well as resources and/or power: A psychopath with low self-control is not likely to do well within conventional society, as they have little to contribute, cannot be trusted, and do not care about anybody but themselves. The second is from more ordinary individuals in possession of inadequately checked power. Unlike antisocial strategies rooted in mating effort and low self-control, a cheater or predation strategy based on competitive advantage can be considered a slow strategy, rooted in deliberate and selfish self-control (McDonald, 2010). The powerful and corrupt often stay in power for a very long time.

Are there individuals out there with the selfishness of the antisocial but the patience and self-control necessary to pursue a slow strategy? Two studies provide examples. Among a sample of white-collar offenders, Patrick (1994) demonstrated that the emotional deficits of psychopathy existed among primary psychopaths who were reasonably high in self-control, and not among individuals with low self-control who did not exhibit primary psychopathy. And an analysis of self-control, general crime, and domestic violence found one subset of abusers who committed other crimes as well, fitting the low self-control/competitively disadvantaged model, but another subset who, while abusing their partners, did not commit other crimes, exhibiting reasonably high levels of what the study deemed “constraint” (Moffitt, Krueger, Caspi, & Fagin, 2000). These findings held across sexes. Thus, at least in relation to their partners, these abusers were competitively advantaged, and did not demonstrate the disadvantageous behaviors associated with low self-control outside the home. To the extent that they pursued an antisocial strategy, it appeared to apply only to mate retention. This study suggests that competitive advantage may be implicated in bullying in various guises.

Sociological criminology, especially the various manifestations of critical criminology, should embrace the competitive advantage model. Not only does it help explain offending among the lower class, it can easily be applied to much organized, corporate, and occupational crime, including political, police, and other official corruption. As the 18th century German writer Friedrich Schiller said, “It is criminal to steal a purse. It is daring to steal a fortune. It is a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.”

Conditional and Alternative Strategies

How do individuals develop the traits, or fall into the environments, or both, that put them at risk for antisocial strategies? One set of explanations emanates from life history theory, which postulates that humans are somewhat plastic in their adoption of a particular strategy. As a fast (e.g., mating effort) strategy is most effective when conditions are unstable, long-term prospects uncertain, and other individuals unreliable, it has been proposed that we unconsciously monitor the environment for cues to instability (Vigil & Geary, 2006), such as father absence (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991), and that these cues can influence unconscious processes, such as the onset of menarche (Ellis, 2004). The earlier the menarche, the earlier reproduction is possible—a fast strategy.

Other research suggests that cues about future uncertainty and life expectancy can influence behavioral manifestations of adaptive strategies in adolescence and young adulthood. In a study using the nationally representative Add Health dataset, Brumbach, Figueredo, and Ellis (2009) linked environmental harshness (witnessing violence) and unpredictability (parental neglect) in adolescence to mating effort and deviant behaviors in young adulthood. Another study using an African American subsample from the same data found that perceptions of future uncertainty (early death, likelihood of getting HIV/AIDS, not going to college) predicted delinquency among both males and females, after controlling for objective factors such as economic status, family structure, and family functioning (Caldwell, Wiebe, & Cleveland, 2006). A third Add Health study found a reciprocal relationship: Fast strategy behaviors (drug use, suicide attempt, arrest, fight-related injury, unsafe sex, and HIV/AIDS) at time 1 predicted future uncertainty (the perception of a likely death by age 35) 1 year and 6 to 7 years later, whereas perceptions of an early death at time 1 predicted fast strategy behaviors, especially HIV/AIDS but excepting illicit drug use, in later waves (Borowsky, Ireland, & Resnick, 2009).

Thus, evidence exists that humans can adopt mating effort strategies pursuant to unconscious cues that a parenting effort strategy would inhibit fitness. To the extent that a strategy depends on perceptions of certain environmental conditions, it is considered a “conditional” strategy. However, there is also evidence that mating effort and other antisocial strategies can often be “alternative” strategies, strongly influenced by genetic factors (Rowe, Vazsonyi, & Figueredo, 1997). Figueredo and colleagues (2006) reviewed evidence that many of the variables underlying life history outcomes, such as onset of menarche, puberty, reproduction, and menopause, show substantial heritabilities (.23 to .45). Even divorce has, in a sample of twins, produced a heritability quotient of .53 (McGue & Lykken, 1992).

In support of the notion that strategies, or at least traits and conditions that bias individuals toward particular strategies, have at least a partial genetic basis, researchers have found substantial heritability for crime (Lyons et al., 1995), delinquency (see Lyons et al., 1995; Rowe & Rogers, 1989), childhood behavior problems (Cleveland, Wiebe, van den Oord, & Rowe, 2000; Leve, Winebarger, Fagot, Reid. & Goldsmith, 1998), psychopathy (Blair et al., 2006), altruism and aggression (Rushton, Fulker, Neale, Nias, & Eysenck, 1986), and low self-control (Beaver et al., 2009), as well as most major general personality traits (Rowe, 1994).

The Cycle of Low Self-Control

In light of the near-universal disdain for antisocial behavior, why does it persist? Part of the answer involves the intergenerational transmission of low self-control. At one end of the nature-nurture continuum, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) proposed the environmental view: Poor parenting is responsible for low self-control, which in turn is the most important individual cause of crime. Furthermore, persons with low self-control, being selfish, impulsive, and present-oriented, among other things, do not tend to be effective parents. Thus, parents with low self-control are thought to produce children with low self-control through purely environmental means, perpetuating antisocial behavior down the generations.

At the alternate end of the continuum is the strong biological position, articulated by Wright and colleagues (2009): “[T]here are clear reasons to suspect that parenting influences, outside of the passive transfer of nuclear material, have little to do with levels of offspring self-control” (p. 84). In this view, parents are simply conduits for DNA, and children simply the products of genetic programming. This conclusion is based on behavior genetic studies such as those noted above that find substantial heritability quotients, and almost no shared environmental effects, for self-control and behavior problems (Wright & Beaver, 2005). Individual parental contributions to genetic risk can be augmented by the phenomenon of assortative mating, through which individuals mate with persons with similar traits (Maes, Silberg, Neale, & Eaves, 2007).

The existence of substantial heritability quotients for low self-control and other manifestations of antisociality clearly controvert arguments at the environmental end, but the strong genetic argument should not be passively accepted in its stead. It is probably not the case that their high heritability quotients indicate that low self-control and other antisocial traits are simply passed on like a genetic disease. In the true biosocial tradition, it turns out that both biology and the environment are implicated in the intergenerational transmission of low self-control.

The first basis on which to question the genetic hypothesis stems from the nature of heritability estimates. It is axiomatic that genes do not express themselves in a vacuum, but in the rearing environment. But environments change in ways that individuals do not. Given both micro- and macro-level influences on the environment, including but not limited to major events and cultural shifts and their effects on individual households, neighborhoods, and schools, the representativeness of the environments from which members of a particular sample are drawn, as opposed to the representativeness of the sample itself, cannot be determined. This is an especially important observation when comparing heritabilities across time. Therefore, heritability quotients are not generalizable, because they are valid only for the environments encountered by the study sample. As Rowe (2002) noted, even for traits and behaviors that exhibit substantial heritability across most samples, extreme environments—either enriched or deprived—can radically change the expression of various genes. Under harsh enough conditions, for example, persons with only slightly above-average levels of biological risk factors can become chronic offenders (Mealey, 1995).

This is an important insight when considering the etiology of low self-control. Low self-control is perpetuated because children with neuropsychological deficits or other biological risk factors for low self-control, mating effort, or persistent delinquency are likely to be difficult children. Unfortunately, they are most often reared by a biological parent or parents who tend to share those risk factors. Parenting by persons with low self-control is likely to be ineffective at best and abusive or neglectful at worst, providing a poor environment for the development of self-control and other prosocial tendencies, especially among children with risk factors for antisociality. Thus, to the extent that there is an “average” environment for children with genetic risks for low self-control, it is an environment in which parenting is less than optimal. This environment can be illustrated by a study of by Moffitt and colleagues (2002). In this study, women who first became mothers at age 20 or earlier (an indicator of low self-control) exhibited other indicia of low self-control as well (antisocial behavior, drug and alcohol problems) as well as personality traits (low conscientiousness and agreeableness) linked to antisocial behavior (Wiebe, 2004a), while their children demonstrated more externalizing behaviors, inattention, and hyperactivity, lower IQ’s, and fewer teacher-reported prosocial behaviors. Perhaps most relevant, parent-child relationships involving these mothers were not as effective, by conventional measures, as those of older mothers: They involved more maternal negativity, less maternal warmth, fewer parent-child activities, and more harm by adults to the children. These outcomes were not simply correlates of the youth of the mothers per se: The average age of the mothers at the time the study children were born was 25 (Moffitt et al., 2002). The study was unable to specify the extent of any genetic contributions to the home environment. In a similar study, fathers who were poorly-supervised as children were themselves poor supervisors of their own offspring, and antisocial behavior among both mothers and fathers predicted antisocial behavior among their children (Smith & Farrington, 2004).

The foregoing research illustrates the hypothetical average environment encountered by the risk-prone genotype, but the average is not the only possible environment. Home environments differ, for example, in family structure. A home may contain one, two, or no biological parents of a particular child, and the child may or may not share the home with half-siblings. While single-family homes correlate positively with delinquency, research suggests that much of the connection between family structure and children’s behavior problems has a genetic basis, indicating that individuals often self-select into single- or two-family homes (Cleveland et al., 2000). In other words, whether a person becomes a single parent often relates to genetic predilections (see also McGue & Lykken, 1992). Single parenthood can be seen as an imperfect indicator of low self-control.

Though family structure can be genetically influenced, evidence exists for a true environmental effect as well, at least in some cases. In the Cleveland et al. (2000) study, differences in behavior problems between children in single-parent, half-sibling homes and intact, full-sibling homes were found to stem almost wholly from genetic factors, but differences between children in single-parent and intact full-sibling households resulted mostly from shared environmental effects, with no significant genetic component.

Furthermore, increasing exposure to antisocial environments has been shown to exacerbate antisocial tendencies in children, producing a gene by environment (GxE) interaction. In research conducted by Jaffee and colleagues (Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2003), the presence of an antisocial father in the home produced higher levels of conduct problems among children, whereas the presence of a father with low levels of antisocial behavior had the opposite effect. These effects were significant even after controlling for the main effects of both parents’ antisocial behavior, a proxy for genetic risk. In another illustration of a GxE interaction that produced antisociality, a Swedish study of 662 adopted sons found that 10% of sons without either their biological and adoptive fathers having been convicted of a crime nonetheless became criminals, whereas 12% of those with an adoptive, but not biological, father who was criminal and 21% of those whose biological, but not adoptive, father was criminal became criminal, indicating very little stand-alone environmental risk and some genetic risk. However, the incidence of criminality among sons rose to 36% when both fathers were criminal (Hutchins & Mednick, 1972/1975; cited in Cloninger & Gottesman, 1987).

The overall message of this research is that both genetic and environmental factors are responsible for the intergenerational transmission of low self-control, with the environment being most harmful among children with above-average genetic risks. Because children at the most risk biologically—impulsive, risk-seeking, emotionally insensitive, cognitively impaired—need exemplary parents, and because they are unlikely to have them without outside intervention, programs like the Perry Preschool or Elmira visiting nurse intervention, in which at-risk mothers and families were identified early and which have had continuing benefits across the generations, may be effective in breaking the cycle of antisociality (Belfield, Nores, Barnett, & Schweinhart, 2006; Eckenrode et al., 2010).

Without such an intervention, the cycle is likely to continue. Gottfredson and Hirschi may ultimately be correct, except that, for children predisposed to low self-control and mating effort, only very effective parents may be good enough to instill high self-control. Because a mating effort strategy based on low self-control is a reproductively viable response to unstable and uncertain environments, and because low self-control parents tend to provide such environments, the strategy perpetuates.

The Origins of Other Antisocial Correlates: Psychopathy, Competitive Advantage

The etiology of psychopathy is less clear than that of low self-control. Psychopathy seems to be modestly heritable, with quotients ranging from .29 to .67 (Blair et al., 2006), so it is clear that it has a strong biological component. Unlike low self-control, however, which can arise when children are inadequately monitored, disciplined, and loved (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), researchers have failed to discern any plausible environmental causes of psychopathy (Blair, Peschardt, Budhani, Mitchell, & Pine, 2006; Cleckley, 1941; Hare, 1993; Mealey, 1995; Walsh & Wu, 2008). However, it should be kept in mind that psychopaths do not inevitably pursue an antisocial strategy (Lykken, 1995). Careful monitoring of social interactions and reputations, as well as certain and swift punishment for wrongdoing, can shrink the antisocial niche available to psychopaths, who could then, if they possess sufficient self-control, turn elsewhere to solve adaptive problems (Mealey, 1995). The niche itself, and therefore the prevalence of the strategy and of the genes underlying it, has probably grown a great deal since the advent of civilization and urbanization (see Cohen & Machalek, 1988; Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Rowe, 1995;). It is easier to outrun one’s reputation and find new victims when living amongst strangers.

Though based on competitive advantage, the crimes of the powerful do not require abnormal traits like psychopathy. As Patrick (1994) demonstrated, not all white-collar criminals are psychopathic. In fact, to explain most nonstreet crime, it may be best to deemphasize the offender and concentrate on the structure of the crime itself. Rational choice theory can help explain crimes of competitive advantage: Offending can be expected where an attractive target, or lure, for crime is insufficiently guarded (Shover & Hochstetler, 2006). The psychology of the potential offender is nearly irrelevant, especially among the powerful. If crime occurs at the intersection of low self-control and criminal opportunity (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), the myriad of opportunities encountered by powerful people, or by people in authoritative or powerful positions, such as law enforcement, means that crimes can be expected even among persons of average levels of self-control (Felson & Boba, 2010; Shover & Hochstetler, 2006).

Conclusion: Implications for Crime Prevention

This article has attempted to reconcile adaptive strategy and life history theory with conventional criminology, and has contrasted antisocial strategies based on competitive disadvantage with those based on competitive advantage. This analysis suggests that, to reduce the prevalence of crime among the disadvantaged, nurturant strategies should be used that help individuals, beginning in childhood, believe that the future is worth waiting, and working, for and that people can be trusted (Vila, 1997). However, such an approach would be irresponsible if society failed to provide sufficient opportunities for the previously disadvantaged to engage in prosocial endeavors and to contribute to, and benefit from, synergy (Wiebe, 2004b).

This analysis also suggests that crime among the advantaged cannot be significantly reduced by focusing on potential criminals and their traits. In accordance with a rational choice perspective, nonstreet crime can most effectively be attacked by regulatory agencies, law enforcement, and the public anticipating and foreclosing opportunities for the rich, powerful, and well-connected to victimize citizens and society.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Bio

Richard P. Wiebe is a professor of criminal justice at Fitchburg (MA) State University. His research interests include the antisocial personality, person–environment interactions and correlations, adolescent risk behaviors, and the process of recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. He recently coedited a book on college recovery communities, as well as coauthoring several of its chapters.

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