The Nature and Nurture of Antisocial Outcomes

by Kevin M. Beaver

Beaver introduces the reader to biosocial criminology, including the ways in which genes and the environment combine together to produce different antisocial outcomes. He then proceeds to provide an empirical examination of the genetic underpinnings to criminal behaviors by analyzing data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The results of the analyses provide some evidence indicating that antisocial phenotypes are due to interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Beaver concludes with a call for criminologists and other social scientists to adopt a biosocial perspective to the study of human behavior.

188 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2008

Reviews

[Steven]

Kind of an unlikely book to read these days. It's premised on the candidate gene association study (CGAS) approach, which has the limitations everyone is aware of. Normally, people dismiss CGAS since things have shifted towards GWAS, but that's bad philosophy of science. The prior observations arent now "unobserved" by the fact that the methods have changed for understanding the genetic bases of traits. The old approach's observations have just been added onto by the later efforts.

Despite the approach's limitations, a number of associations were found between alleles and deviance. The presentation of that information is very measured with references to earlier studies that reproduced the findings and those that didn't.