Evaluation

• Androcentrism - Predominantly describes male perspective.
• Gender bias issues: Alpha bias: Lombroso believed women are naturally jealous, insensitive to pain, passive, low IQ. etc. But women have a maternal instinct which reduces criminality.
• x - issues w/ twin evidence - It is assumed by researchers that environmental factors are held constant when studying twins because they are bought up together and therefore must experience similar environments. However, it may affect monozygous twins more because they are identical and people treat them with more similarity which therefore affects behaviour. We can see some interference from the environment here which suggests the impact of nurture on nature (the interactionist approach).
• strength - support for diathesis stress model- A study of 13,000 danish adoptees was conducted by Mendrick (1984). When neither biological parents nor adoptive parents had convictions, the percentage of adoptees with convictions was 13.5% which is quite high. This figure rose to 20% with at least one parent with convictions and 24.5% with both parents having convictions. Shows genetic inheritance plays a role but environmental influence is also important, providing support for diathesis stress model.
• Neural explanations strength - Brain evidence - There is support for the link between crime and the frontal lobe. Kandel and freed (1989) reviewed evidence from frontal lobe damage and antisocial behaviour. People with such damage tended to show impulsive behaviour, emotional instability, and inability to learn from different mistakes. The prefrontal lobe is associated with planning behaviour.
• x - intervening variables - Link between neural differences and APD may be more complex. Farrington et al (2006) studied a group of men who scored high on APD. They experienced various risk factors during childhood such as neglect or being raised by a convicted parent therefore reduced frontal lobe activity. this could be due to trauma. Suggests there may be intervening variables present. Raine et al found that individuals with APD had significanly less grey matter and functioning in the prefrontal cortex