New research finds cortical differences between seriously antisocial individuals and controls

In this new study, structural MRI data were collected on 672 45-year-old participants in the Dunedin Study, a population-representative longitudinal cohort. Twelve percent were classified as having life-course persistent (LCP) antisocial behavior, while 23% were categorized as having adolescent-limited (AL) antisocial behavior. 

These are classifications developed by criminologist Terrie Moffitt back in the 90s who hypothesized that the LCP pattern is characterized by genetically-rooted, neurological deficits, while the AL pattern is explained more by social factors experienced during adolescence.

The authors found that the LCP group, compared to the low antisocial behavior group, had a significantly smaller mean global surface cortical area and lower mean cortical thickness. The effect sizes were of moderate size for the cortical area and of smaller magnitude for the cortical thickness.

The cortical measures for the AL group were not significantly different than those for the low antisocial group.

The authors concluded that the results for both the LCP and AL groups were consistent with Moffitt's theory of antisocial behavior.

Do Hispanics litter more than whites?

Steve Sailer was debating yesterday with some immigration researcher about whether Hispanics litter more than whites. The American Housing Survey asks respondents if there is trash within half a block of their residence (sample size = 21,720). I show below the percentage of people by race who say there is a little or a lot:

Percent with litter within half a block

Blacks  15.9
American Indians  10.2
Hispanics  9.6
Whites  6.2
Asians  5.2

This is a racial/ethnic pattern that pops again and again with respect to all kinds of antisocial behavior: blacks and Native Americans are at the top, Hispanics are higher than whites, and Asians are better than everyone else. On the specific issue of Hispanics vs. whites, the percentage saying yes about trash is 1 1/2 times higher for Hispanics.

Genes for crime are correlated with genes for having lots of babies

Wow (from BioRxiv):

Prior evolutionary theory provided reason to suspect that measures of development and reproduction would be correlated with antisocial behaviors in human and non-human species. Behavioral genetics has revealed that most quantitative traits are heritable, suggesting that these phenotypic correlations may share genetic etiologies. We use GWAS data to estimate the genetic correlations between various measures of reproductive development (N= 52,776 - 318,863) and antisocial behavior (N= 31,968). Our genetic correlation analyses demonstrate that alleles associated with higher reproductive output (number of children ever born, rg=0.50, p=.0065) were positively correlated with alleles associated with antisocial behavior, whereas alleles associated with more delayed reproductive onset (age of first birth, rg=-.64, p=.0008) were negatively associated with alleles linked to antisocial behavior. Ultimately, these findings coalesce with evolutionary theories suggesting that increased antisocial behaviors may partly represent a faster life history approach, which may be significantly calibrated by genes.

Okay, long sentences with no conjugal visits.

Poor nutrition and antisocial behavior

We emphasize genes on this blog, but far be it from me to dismiss the environment as sociologists dismiss genetic influence.  This study shows that even after we control for genes and shared environment, poor nutrition predicts antisocial behavior among children.  So feed your kiddies good stuff.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235215300155

Explaining the connection between never going to church and criminality: Razib at Gene Expression made an interesting point about my GSS finding that 43% of men who never go to church have been arrested:

The main question I would have are the affects of the background environment; in many socially conservative environments the expectation of involvement in a church is very strong and unchurched status could be a signal for anti-social tendencies. I know whereof I speak, I grew up for a while in a 3/4 Republican 99% white region of the Mountain West and those who were unchurched were often those who were "up to no good" (a small minority were secular liberals, but only a very small minority). My own prediction would be that this would be a more common phenomenon in a very religious country like the United States.

One way to test this hypothesis is to see if the relationship between church attendance and the risk of arrest is stronger in regions of the United States where people worship more frequently. The General Social Survey divides the country into nine divisions. I calculated mean church attendance for each region (scores range from "never" (=0) to "more than once a week" (=8)):


Mean church attendance score

East South Central 4.51
West South Central 4.28
West North Central 4.13
South Atlantic 4.10
East North Central 3.91
Middle Atlantic 3.67
New England 3.60
Mountain 3.54
Pacific 3.13


My next step was to estimate the association between arrest and attendance for each of the nine divisions: I did this with logistic regression (sample sizes ranged between 460 and 2,306). I then calculated the Pearson correlation between these logit coefficients and the mean attendance scores displayed above. It is .44. This means that the connection between arrest and never going to church is stronger in areas where churchgoing is most common. So Razib might be right that in religious areas many of the well-adjusted folks feel like they should go to church, leaving a high percentage of antisocial people among the ranks of non-attenders.

Young black and Hispanic kids are the most hyperactive and antisocial: A reader suggested in an earlier post that the black orientation toward authority is the product of living among many lawless young people. It seems likely that culture is often a reaction to the characteristics of the group. The college-prep class can afford to have a less structured environment that fosters self-direction than a classroom at a last chance school.

But do blacks, on average, behave any differently than whites? A surprisingly candid study I found in the Journal of Marriage and Family (2003; 65:835-849) analyzed data on more than 2,000 black, white, and Hispanic kids (the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth). They looked at kids from age 5 to 13 and found that blacks had the highest rates of hyperactivity, Hispanics second, and whites third. The gap was evident at age 5 and it persisted through age 13. They began measuring antisocial behavior at age 7: the racial/ethnic ranking was the same, but while blacks and Hispanics got increasingly antisocial as they aged, whites did not. I suspect this pattern is common: early (possibly genetic) differences being magnified by different environments.

Now the author attibuted hyperactivity to home environment variables (he is a sociologist, after all), but I've seen several studies reporting large heritability. So, if a community has a greater density of hyperactive children and antisocial youths, one would expect it to react with a more authoritarian culture.

But as we have seen on this blog, values and behavior are not always consistent: in spite of all their bluster about kids needing a good whoopin' once in a while, the study shows that blacks do not spank their kids more often than whites. And incidentally, whites provide more emotional support and cognitive stimulation.