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2314059
Biological explanations of criminality
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Mind Map on Biological explanations of criminality, created by James Wright on 19/03/2015.
Mind Map by
James Wright
, updated more than 1 year ago
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James Wright
over 9 years ago
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Resource summary
Biological explanations of criminality
Family studies
You compare family trees of criminals and non criminals
The child is more likely to become criminal if their grandparents or parents are
You can't separate the biological factors from the environment
Adoption studies have been more successful
Mednick 1984
Studied 14,427 adopted children and compared their criminal records with those of both adopted and biological parents
Those who have criminal records for theft have biological fathers with the same record even if separated
It showed that some criminal behaviour is influenced by biological factors
Twin studies
Christiansen 1977
Studied 3586 twins in Denmark
He found if an identical twin was a criminal 52% of the time their twin was also criminal
He found that with non identical twins if one twin was criminal only 22% of the time their twin was also criminal
Theilgaard 1984
Wanted to see if criminals had a gene that was responsible for their criminal beahaviour
Studied 30,000 men born in the 1940's
Theilgaard took blood samples from the 30,000 and analysed the 23 pairs of chromosomes each person has
From 30,000 only 16 were found to have the XXY abnormality and 12 had the XYY abnormality
The final twelve were then examined
The 12 were interviewed by a social worker who didn't know the aim of the study about their background and criminal history
The twelve were also given IQ tests
The twelve were given personality tests
The XYY males only had slightly lower levels of intelligence than average
They also tended to be more aggressive
There were far more similarities than differences between XXY and XXY males
The social worker didn't know the aim of the study so that eliminated interviewer biase
Theilgaard used a variety of tests to get her data. Which improved the credibility of her results
This was only tested on 12 men with the XYY out of 30,000 so it's impossible to generalise it to all men who have the XYY abnormality
The links between XYY males and aggression is only a correlation so the chromosome abnormality may not be the cause of the increased aggression
Not all XYY males were criminals and via versa
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