Genetic and environmental bases of childhood antisocial behavior: A multi-informant twin study.

Abstract

Genetic and environmental influences on childhood antisocial and aggressive behavior (ASB) during childhood were examined in 9-to 10-year-old twins, using a multi-informant approach. The sample (605 families of twins or triplets) was socioeconomically and ethnically diverse, representative of the culturally diverse urban population in Southern California. Measures of ASB included symptom counts for conduct disorder, ratings of aggression, delinquency, and psychopathic traits obtained through child self-reports, teacher, and caregiver ratings. Multivariate analysis revealed a common ASB factor across informants that was strongly heritable (heritability was .96), highlighting the importance of a broad, general measure obtained from multiple sources as a plausible construct for future investigations of specific genetic mechanisms in ASB. The best fitting multivariate model required informant-specific genetic, environmental, and rater effects for variation in observed ASB measures. The results suggest that parent, children, and teachers have only a partly "shared view" and that the additional factors that influence the "rater-specific" view of the child's antisocial behavior vary for different informants. This is the first study to demonstrate strong heritable effects on ASB in ethnically and economically diverse samples. Keywords antisocial behavior; aggression; genes; environment Why do some children grow up to be prosocial, law-abiding individuals, whereas others engage in patterns of disruptive, defiant, and delinquent behavior, even falling into the criminal justice system well before reaching adulthood? A plethora of studies have investigated the etiology of such individual differences, with abundant evidence demonstrating the importance of both social circumstances and biological risk factors in antisocial behavior across the life span (Baker, 1999;Raine, 1993Raine, ,2002Raine, Brennan, Farrington, & Mednick, 1997;Stoff, Breiling, & Maser, 1997). Among these risk factors, genetic and environmental influences have been of considerable interest and are likely to play a key role in our understanding of aggression and other antisocial behaviors and, thus, our ability to avert them.

Parental Influences on the Prevalence and Development of Child Aggressiveness

“…In parenting, a low level of child-centered communication and the use of physical violence can activate aggressiveness in the children, as shown by our data. Using violence in child rearing, as manifested by a part of the mothers and fathers in this study, may be connected with a child's aggressiveness by different mechanisms, e.g., imitation, a frustration-aggression reaction or by a number of shared genes of parents and children (Baker et al 2007;Brendgen et al 2005;Hudziak et al 2003;Miles and Carey 1997;van den Oord et al 1994;Wahl 2009). …”

DSM-IV Antisocial Personality Disorder and Conduct Disorder: Evidence for Taxonic Structures Among Individuals With and Without Substance Use Disorders in the General Population

“…Dimensional variation underlying antisocial syndromes may arise from many small genetic and environmental infl uences that either accumulate or interact. A large literature shows that the categories found in the present study have both environmental and genetic variances (e.g., Baker et al, 2007;Slutske, 2001;Tuvblad et al, 2006). Thus, etiology may stem from a threshold effect (requiring a critical threshold on a stressor to be surpassed before a disorder develops), nonlinear interaction (requiring synergism of multiple causal factors), or developmental bifurcation (requiring separation into discrete classes from an initial nontaxonic state) (Meehl, 1992).…”

Interpersonal and Affective Dimensions of Psychopathic Traits in Adolescents: Development and Validation of a Self-Report Instrument

“…Generally, among males and females recruited from clinical and community samples, the former tend to have higher psychopathy scores [76][77][78]. With adjudicated delinquents some studies report none or very few gender differences [79,80] while others report that females score higher than males on impulsivity and conduct problems, but not on Callous…”