Genetic Predispositions

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The idea that inherited genetic predispositions may underlie the risk for engaging in criminal behavior is not exactly new. Perhaps most convincingly, several adoption studies in the 1970s and 1980s provided powerful evidence that having an incarcerated birth parent raised one’s own risk of earning a criminal conviction as an adult, even if reared by pro-social, law-abiding – but genetically unrelated – foster parents. This remarkable finding was replicated in adoptive cohorts across cultures, including two Scandinavian studies (Cloninger et al., 1982; Mednick et al., 1984) as well as in the United States (Cadoret et al., 1983). Based on these adoption studies, the genetic effect on criminal outcomes appears important for both…show more content…
(2002), and therefore the possibility of a spurious finding by accounting for passive and evocative gene–environment correlation could be ruled out. It should be mentioned that passive gene–environment correlation refers to the association between the genotype a child inherits from her parents and the environment in which the child is raised, and evocative gene–environment correlation occurs when an individual’s (heritable) behavior evokes an environmental response. Moreover, the authors also conducted a meta-analysis. Across five included studies (Caspi et al., 2002; Foley et al., 2004; Haberstick et al., 2005; Kim-Cohen et al., 2006; Nilsson et al., 2006) the adverse mental health problems were greatest for maltreated boys with the genotype conferring low MAOA activity. It was concluded that these findings provide strong evidence suggesting that the MAOA gene influences vulnerability to environmental stress, and that this biological process can be initiated early in life. However, these findings need to be replicated in samples including females. A gene–environment interaction has also been identified for variation in the…show more content…
It is important to emphasize that the DeLisi et al. (2008) finding involves the age of onset of first police contact, and not the overall risk for offending vs. not offending. However, different forms of the DRD2 allele have demonstrated associations with criminal victimization (Beaver et al., 2007) and age of first sexual intercourse (Miller et al., 1999), as well as normal personality variation (Munafò et al., 2003). Other studies have also found gene–gene interactions between DRD2 and DRD4 in predicting conduct disorder in childhood and criminal offending in adults (Beaver et al., 2007). Still, the finding of enhanced risk for later onset criminal offending as a function of high genetic risk combined with low environmental risk is contrary to predictions from other developmental models of antisocial behavior. Both Moffitt (2005) and Lahey et al. (1999) have suggested that early-onset forms should be more pervasive over time and

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