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  3. New research points to a biological role in criminality.The tattoo on the ex-con’s beefy arm reads：Born to raise hell.Much as it

New research points to a biological role in criminality.The tattoo on the ex-con’s beefy arm reads：Born to raise hell.Much as it

admin2021-03-27  21
问题         New research points to a biological role in criminality.The tattoo on the ex-con’s beefy arm reads：Born to raise hell.Much as it may defy the science of the past, which blamed crime on the social influences such as poverty and bad parenting, the outlaw may be onto something.Though no one would deny that upbringing and environment play important, parts in the making of a criminal, scientists increasingly suspect that biology also plays a significant, role.
        Poverty and family problems, sex-role expectations, community standards—all may predispose individuals toward crime.But many researchers now believe that the reason one individual commits a crime and another person doesn’t may have as much to do with neurological differences as it does with differences in upbringing or environment.After all, says Dr.Tames Q.Wilson, a professor of management and public policy at UCLA, "it’s hard to find any form of behavior that doesn’t have some biological component."
        After evaluating recent research on violence, a special panel gathered by the National Research Council (NRC) in Washington published a lengthy report last fall noting that "even if two individuals could be exposed to identical experiences, their potentials for violent behavior would differ because their nervous systems process information differently."

        First and most obvious among the clues that biology plays a role in criminal behaviors is the simple fact that throughout history, crime has occurred in all cultures.One element in the universality of crime is the human capacity for aggression.Nobel prizewinning ethnologist Konrad Lorenz, author of On Aggression, argued that just as people have an instinct for eating and drinking, nature evolved in them the impulse for aggression.Though Lorenz thought it was peculiar to people and rats, aggression has now been observed in every vertebrate species studied.In people, only a fine line separates aggression from violence—defined by researchers as behavior intended to inflict harm on others."Criminals are, on the whole, angry people," says Harvard psychologist Richard Hemstein."That is well substantiated."
        Another simple fact pointing to a biological basis for criminality is that in all societies, about 90% of violent criminals are men—many of them young.The great majority of other crimes are also committed by men.Among animals too, the male is almost always more aggressive.This fact suggests that certain hormones, particularly androgens, which characterize maleness, may help tip the balance from obeying to breaking the law.
        While there’s no such thing as a "crime gene" ,or indeed any single determinant that leads a person to break the law, each child is born with a particular temperament, or characteristic pattern of psychological response.As Wilson notes," One is shy, the other bold; one sleeps through the night, the other is always awake; one is curious and exploratory, the other passive.These observations are about differences that cannot be explained wholly or even largely by environment.
        Linking an individual’s temperament to criminality is, of course, a much more contentious matter.To search for the roots of violence, the members of the NRG panel asked several key questions.Why do some children show patterns of unusually aggressive behavior—hitting, kicking, biting peers or parents, or being cruel to animals—at an early age? Why do only a small percentage of those children commit violent crimes as adults? The panel concluded："Research strongly suggests that violence arises from interactions among individuals’ psychological development, their neurological and hormonal differences, and social processes." There is no basis, the researchers added, for giving one of these elements more weight than another.
        Nonetheless, two camps have emerged to debate whether criminality is influenced more by nature (biology) or nurture (environment).And this is no mere ivory tower question.Public interest, mounts with the statistics：Some 35 million offenses against people or households, 20% of them violent, are reported in the US every year.
        Research that may help resolve this nature-nurture question focuses mostly on three areas: biochemical imbalances, genetic factors and physical damage such as head injury around the time of birth.Some studies suggest a link between behaviors—particularly the violent sort—and birth-related trauma, premature birth or low birth weight.Similarly, a woman’s use of alcohol, cocaine, tobacco or other drugs during pregnancy also appears, in some instances, to damage fetal development in a way that is related to later criminality.On a more positive note, however, one recent study concluded that when children who’d had a traumatic birth grew up in a stable family environment, they were no likelier than anyone else to develop into criminals.
What is the focus of research on the nature-nurture question?
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答案The focus is mostly on three areas: biochemical imbalances, genetic factors and physical damage such as head injury around the time of birth.
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