The Anatomy of Violence (65 page)

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60 Minutes: Murder Gene: Man on Death Row Bases Appeal on the Belief That His Criminal Tendencies Are Inherited
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    2.
It is thought that this “malfunction” or spontaneous event of identical twinning occurs when a blastocyst collapses and splits the progenitor cells in two, with the same genetic material in both sides of the embryo, resulting in the development of two identical embryos.

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Baker, L. A., Barton, M. & Raine, A. (2002). The Southern California Twin Register at the University of Southern California.
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Baker, L. A., Jacobsen, K., Raine, A., Lozano, D. I. & Bezdjian, S. (2007). Genetic and environmental bases of childhood antisocial behavior: A multi-informant twin study.
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    5.
Ibid.

    6.
The heritability of 98 percent that we obtain from our twin study is very high, and might be applying to children who are seen to be antisocial by all informants of their behavior. In contrast, other children may be antisocial, but their parents and teachers are not aware of their antisocial behavior.

    7.
Baker, L., Raine, A., Liu, J. & Jacobsen, K. C. (2008). Genetic and environmental influences on reactive and proactive aggression in children.
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Arseneault, L., Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Taylor, A., Rijsdijk, F. V., et al. (2003). Strong genetic effects on cross-situational antisocial behaviour among 5-year-old children according to mothers, teachers, examiner-observers, and twins’ self-reports.
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Christiansen, K. O. (1977). A review of criminality among twins. In S. A. Mednick and K. O. Christiansen (eds.),
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Schwesinger, G. (1952). The effect of differential parent-child relations on identical twin resemblance in personality.
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Grove, et al. Heritability of substance abuse and antisocial behavior.

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Baker, et al. Genetic and environmental bases of childhood antisocial behavior.

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  21.
Ibid.

  22.
Ibid.

  23.
Ibid.

  24.
In contrast to twin studies, several adoption studies have not shown heritability for violence. One explanation is that adoption studies rely on convictions for violence as their measure, yet conviction data is a notoriously poor measure, as most people who are violent are never even arrested, let alone convicted. In contrast, twin studies have relied more on laboratory, parent, teacher, child, and adult ratings of aggressive and violent behavior, which assess
degree
of aggression and hence have a much broader, more reliable, and more systematic radar screen compared with conviction data, which offers a much simpler yes/no dichotomy.

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Telfer, M. A, Baker, D., Clark, G. R. & Richardson, C. E. (1968). Incidence
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Davis, R. J., McGee, B. J., Empson, J. & Engel, E. (1970). XYY and crime.
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Witkin, H. A., Mednick, S. A., Schulsinger, F. et al. (1976). Criminality in XYY and XXY men.
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Ibid.

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Ross, J. L., Roeltgen, D. P., Kushner, H., Zinn, A. R., Reiss, A., et al. (2012). Behavioral and social phenotypes in boys with 47, XYY syndrome or 47, XXY Klinefelter syndrome.
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Brunner, H. (2011). Do the genes tell it all? Invited address, Congress on
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Brunner, H. G. (2011). Personal communication, Amsterdam, January 19.

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  36.
Ibid.

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Farrington, D. P. (2000). Psychosocial predictors of adult antisocial personality and adult convictions.
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Brunner, H. (1996). MAOA deficiency and abnormal behaviour: Perspectives on an association.
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Cases, O., Seif, I., Grimsby, J., Gaspar, P., Chen, K., et al. (1995). Aggressive behavior and altered amounts of brain serotonin and norepinephrine in mice lacking MAOA.
Science
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Caspi, A., McClay, J., Moffitt, T., Mill, J., Martin, J., et al. (2002). Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children.
Science
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Kim-Cohen, J., Caspi, A., Taylor, A., Williams, B., Newcombe, R., et al. (2006). MAOA, maltreatment, and gene-environment interaction predicting children’s mental health: New evidence and a meta-analysis.
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Beach, S.R.H., Brody, G. H., Gunter, T. D., Packer, H., Wernett, P., et al. (2010). Child maltreatment moderates the association of MAOA with symptoms of depression and antisocial personality disorder.
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Williams, L. M., Gatt, J. M., Kuan, S. A., Dobson-Stone, C., Palmer, D. M., et al. (2009). A polymorphism of the MAOA gene is associated with emotional brain markers and personality traits on an antisocial index.
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Guo, G., Ou, X. M., Roettger, M. & Shih, J. C. (2008). The VNTR 2 repeat in MAOA and delinquent behavior in adolescence and young adulthood: Associations and MAOA promoter activity.
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McDermott, R., Tingley, D., Cowden, J., Frazzetto, G. & Johnson, D.D.P. (2009). Monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA) predicts behavioral aggression following provocation.
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  47.
The important caveat that has to be borne in mind in interpreting the link between the low MAOA gene and antisocial behavior is that it accounts for only a small proportion of the variance. This is also true of most genes that have been linked to personality or mental illnesses.

  48.
Maori violence blamed on gene (2006).
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Lea, R. & Chambers, G. (2007). Monoamine oxidase, addiction, and the “warrior” gene hypothesis.
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Lea & Chambers, Monoamine oxidase, addiction, and the “warrior” gene hypothesis.

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Merriman, T. & Cameron, V. (2007). Risk-taking: Behind the warrior gene story.
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Crampton, P. & Parkin, C. (2007). Warrior genes and risk-taking science.
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Lea & Chambers, Monoamine oxidase, addiction, and the “warrior” gene hypothesis.

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Brunner, et al. Abnormal behavior associated with a point mutation in the structural gene for monoamine oxidase A.

  58.
Eisenberger et al., Understanding genetic risk for aggression.

  59.
It should be noted that the MAOA–antisocial relationship has not been found in all cultures. Shih and colleagues did not observe such a relationship
with either antisocial personality disorder or antisocial alcoholism in participants from Taiwan: see Lu, R. B., Lin, W. W., Lee, J. F., Ko, H. C. & Shih, J. C. (2003). Neither antisocial personality disorder nor antisocial alcoholism is associated with the MAO-A gene in Han Chinese males.
Alcoholism-Clinical and Experimental Research
27(6), 889–93. Furthermore, the interaction between abuse and low MAOA has not been found in African-Americans in one report: see Widom, C. S. & Brzustowicz, L. M. (2006). MAOA and the “Cycle of violence”: Childhood abuse and neglect, MAOA genotype, and risk for violent and antisocial behavior.
Biological Psychiatry
60, 684–89.

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Williams, et al., A polymorphism of the MAOA gene is associated with emotional brain markers.

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