An Evolutionary Criminology Approach

266 Pages·2015·1.32 MB·English

by  Joseph L. Nedelec

Florida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2013
The Influence of Antisocial Behavior on the
Life Course: An Evolutionary Criminology
Approach
Joseph L. Nedelec
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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

THE INFLUENCE OF ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR ON THE LIFE COURSE: AN
EVOLUTIONARY CRIMINOLOGY APPROACH

By

JOSEPH L. NEDELEC

A Dissertation submitted to the
College of Criminology and Criminal Justice
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:
Summer Semester, 2013
Joseph L. Nedelec defended this dissertation on June 14, 2013.
The members of the supervisory committee were:

Kevin M. Beaver
Professor Directing Dissertation

Lisa A. Eckel

University Representative

Eric P. Baumer
Committee Member

Eric A. Stewart
Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

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I dedicate this dissertation to my father, George J. Nedelec. It is my most sincere wish that he
would have lived to hear his ‘number two and a half son’ be called “Dr. Nedelec”.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to first acknowledge my supervisor and mentor, Dr. Kevin Beaver. Without Dr.
Beaver’s guidance, support, encouragement, and honesty this project would never exist and my
time in graduate school would have ended long ago. From the moment I arrived at Florida State,
Dr. Beaver has supported my advancement as a scholar. Consistently, Dr. Beaver has
exemplified that for which a scientist, an educator, a mentor, and a human being should strive.
He has sacrificed his time, energy, involvement with family, and more to see that I succeed.
Owing solely to his tutelage, I am certain that my experience in graduate school is qualitatively
and quantitatively advantageous relative to those who did not work with Dr. Beaver. It is with
overwhelming gratitude that I am thankful for the unimaginable benefit I have been provided in
working with such an eminent scholar and person. It has been an absolute privilege to work as
Dr. Beaver’s student, and I have no delusions about the improbability of the future I now have
had I been without his guidance and support.
I would also like to acknowledge my dissertation committee. Dr. Eric Baumer, Dr. Eric
Stewart, and Dr. Lisa Eckel have been exemplary scholars, and their comments on earlier drafts
of this project were immensely valuable. It is with abundant delight that I am able to include
such recognizable and influential names on the second page of this project. My pure selfishness
received considerable satisfaction with their inclusion in my committee and I am exceedingly
grateful for their support and guidance. All three of you have my most sincere thanks, respect,
and admiration.
In the same vein, I wish to thank and acknowledge my past supervisors and committee
members for my honor’s thesis, my Master’s thesis, and those who have been kind enough to
write letters of recommendation on my behalf for graduate school and employment. My thanks
to Dr. Gail Anderson, Dr. William Bales, Dr. Ehor Boyanowsky, Professor Neil Boyd, Mr. Scott
Cobbe, Dr. Matt Eichor, Professor H. Martin Jayne, Dr. Bryan Kinney, and Professor Neil Madu.
Each of you has provided me with tremendous help in the years leading up to this
accomplishment.
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I would like to acknowledge my fellow FSU criminology doctoral students with whom I
have shared many great experiences and formed numerous valuable friendships. Particular
recognition should be given to Joseph Schwartz and Eric Connolly, both of whom provided
instrumental support and friendship. It was an incredible twist of fate that allowed me to work
with these two soon-to-be superstars of criminology; I have gleaned far more from them than
they ever received in return.
As a criminologist, I have been exposed to mountains of research illustrating the horrible
familial circumstances through which many people have lived. With such a contextual
perspective, I am unable to imagine how my own familial situation could have been any better
than it was. As such, I wish to acknowledge and thank my mother, Judy Brummund and my
father, George J. Nedelec, for their unwavering love, encouragement, and support as I
continually exploited their every resource to advance my own life (to use the vernacular of
evolutionary biology). I want to thank all five of my siblings for their support in the past and the
guidance and praise they continue to provide today. What an extraordinary benefit it was for my
life to be surrounded by these incredible individuals possessing such a rich love of life,
adventure, and knowledge. I have missed all of you dearly while completing my graduate
education so far from home. My younger sister, Suzanne, deserves specific praise and
recognition. However, sibling rivalry prevents me from providing it in print. I have been
blessed with a large extended family from whom I was given incalculable love and support and
who I am sure will be happy to see that I finished my schooling before retirement age. Finally, I
wish to thank my wife’s family who welcomed a hockey-loving Canuck into their family of
Cardinals and Saints fans. My father-in law and mother-in law have been particularly gracious
in their willingness to accept me into their family. Their continued love and support is a constant
humbling experience for which I am overwhelmingly grateful.
My final acknowledgement goes to my wife, Amanda. Her love, friendship, and smile
have allowed me to carry on through more days than I care to admit. With selfless abandon she
left an incredible job, her friends, and her family to accompany me to Tallahassee. With
continued selflessness she never, not even once in four years, got upset with me for having to
work on research, course work, or my dissertation. Now that it is all over, I am asking her to
once again abandon what she has acquired in her life as my career advances. Her sacrifices are
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incredible and her reward miniscule. To be sure, without her support this project would not have
been completed, and without her presence in my life my purpose would be deficient and my
laughter diminished.
Trying to put into words the gratitude for a lifetime filled with supportive family, friends,
colleagues, teachers, and mentors is a futile task of despicable insufficiency. I wish to thank
each and every person who has helped me, in one way or another, to achieve the accomplishment
that accompanies this project. However, it is impossible to list everyone and those who are listed
have not been given the appropriate praise and recognition that they so richly deserve. This list
is therefore incomplete and unsatisfactory, as my level of gratitude is beyond adequate
expression.
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This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan
Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice
Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative
funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald
R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to
obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website
(http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921
for this analysis.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... xi
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................ xiii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................xiv

CHAPTER 1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ......................................................................1
1.1 Antisocial Conduct and Sexual Behaviors: A Quagmire ....................................................3
1.2 Research Questions ...........................................................................................................7
1.3 Contributions of the Current Study ....................................................................................9
1.4 Outline ............................................................................................................................ 12

CHAPTER 2 EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE HISTORY THEORY .............. 17
2.1 Evolutionary Psychology ................................................................................................ 19
2.1.1 Evolutionary Biology: An Introduction..................................................................... 20
2.1.2 Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Evolutionary Psychology ........................ 22
2.1.3 Sexual Behaviors, Delinquency, and Evolutionary Psychology ................................. 24
2.1.4 Evolutionary Psychology in Criminology ................................................................. 25
2.2 Life History Theory ........................................................................................................ 26
2.2.1 Empirical Research on Life History Theory .............................................................. 27
2.3 Summary and Discussion of Evolutionary Psychology and Life History Theory ............. 33

CHAPTER 3 BIOSOCIAL CRIMINOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION ...................................... 34
3.1 Behavior Genetic Research Methods: An Overview ........................................................ 39
3.1.1 Methods for Estimating h2, c2, and e2 ........................................................................ 44
3.1.2 Twin Studies ............................................................................................................ 45
3.1.3 The Equal Environment Assumption in Twin Studies ............................................... 52
3.1.4 Assortative Mating and Twin Studies ....................................................................... 56
3.1.5 Zygosity Determination in Twin Studies................................................................... 57
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3.1.6 The External Validity of Twin Studies ...................................................................... 60
3.1.7 Summary of Twin Studies ........................................................................................ 61
3.1.8 Family Studies.......................................................................................................... 62
3.1.9 Adoption Studies ...................................................................................................... 64
3.1.10 External Validity of Adoption Studies .................................................................... 65
3.1.11 Selective Placement in Adoption Studies ................................................................ 66
3.1.12 Timing of Adoption in Adoption Studies ................................................................ 66
3.1.13 Monozygotic Twins Reared Apart Studies .............................................................. 67
3.1.14 Combination Design Studies................................................................................... 69
3.1.15 Isolating Components of e2 ..................................................................................... 70
3.1.16 Summary of Behavior Genetics Methods ................................................................ 72
3.2 Molecular Genetics and Gene-Environment Interplay ..................................................... 73
3.2.1 Molecular Genetics .................................................................................................. 74
3.2.2 The Gene .................................................................................................................. 74
3.2.3 Genetic Polymorphisms ............................................................................................ 76
3.2.4 Genetic Variance and Phenotypic Variance .............................................................. 79
3.2.5 Gene X Environment (GxE) ..................................................................................... 80
3.2.6 Gene-Environment Correlation (rGE) ....................................................................... 83
3.2.7 Passive rGE .............................................................................................................. 84
3.2.8 Active rGE ............................................................................................................... 85
3.2.9 Evocative rGE .......................................................................................................... 85
3.2.10 Summary of Gene-Environment Interplay .............................................................. 86
3.3 Biosocial Research on Antisocial Behavior and Sexual/Reproductive Behaviors ............. 86
3.3.1 Meta-Analyses of Biosocial Research on Antisocial Behavior .................................. 87
3.3.2 Biosocial Research on Sexual/Reproductive Behaviors............................................. 97
3.3.3 Summary of Biosocial Research on Antisocial Behavior and Sexual/Reproductive
Behaviors ....................................................................................................................... 102

CHAPTER 4 EVOLUTIONARY CRIMINOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
............................................................................................................................................... 105

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CHAPTER 5 METHODS........................................................................................................ 109
5.1 Data .............................................................................................................................. 109
5.1.1 Analytical Sample Creation .................................................................................... 114
5.1.2 The External Validity of the Add Health Twin Subsample ...................................... 117
5.2 Measures....................................................................................................................... 118
5.2.1 Delinquent and Criminal Behaviors ........................................................................ 118
5.2.2 Involvement with the Criminal Justice System During Adolescence ....................... 121
5.2.3 Sexual Behavior Measures ..................................................................................... 121
5.2.4 Relationship and Reproductive Measures ............................................................... 123
5.2.5 Composite Sexual Behavior Index and Composite Reproductive Behavior Index ... 126
5.2.6 Control Variables ................................................................................................... 128
5.3 Analytical Plan ............................................................................................................. 131
5.3.1 Research Question 1 ............................................................................................... 132
5.3.2 Research Question 2 ............................................................................................... 133
5.3.3 Cross-Twin Correlations......................................................................................... 133
5.3.4 Univariate ACE Decomposition Model .................................................................. 134
5.3.5 Research Question 3 ............................................................................................... 139
5.3.6 DeFries-Fulker (DF) Models .................................................................................. 139
5.3.7 MZ Difference Score Models ................................................................................. 142
5.3.8 Summary of Analytical Plan ................................................................................... 144

CHAPTER 6 RESULTS ......................................................................................................... 152
6.1 Research Question 1 ..................................................................................................... 152
6.1.1 Bivariate Analyses.................................................................................................. 152
6.1.2 Multivariate Analyses ............................................................................................. 153
6.2 Research Question 2 ..................................................................................................... 156
6.2.1 Cross-Twin Correlations......................................................................................... 156
6.2.2 Univariate ACE Models ......................................................................................... 157
6.3 Research Question 3 ..................................................................................................... 159
6.3.1 DF Models ............................................................................................................. 160
6.3.2 DF Model Results for Adolescent Antisocial Behaviors ......................................... 161
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