Original Article
Criminal offending as part of an alternative reproductive strategy: investigating evolutionary hypotheses using Swedish total population data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.06.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Criminality is highly costly to victims and their relatives, but often also to offenders. From an evolutionary viewpoint, criminal behavior may persist despite adverse consequences by providing offenders with fitness benefits as part of a successful alternative mating strategy. Specifically, criminal behavior may have evolved as a reproductive strategy based on low parental investment reflected in low commitment in reproductive relationships. We linked data from nationwide total population registers in Sweden to test if criminality is associated with reproductive success. Further, we used several different measures related to monogamy to determine the relation between criminal behavior and alternative mating tactics. Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. Importantly, the increased reproductive success of criminals was explained by a fertility increase from having children with several different partners. We conclude that criminality appears to be adaptive in a contemporary industrialized country, and that this association can be explained by antisocial behavior being part of an adaptive alternative reproductive strategy.

Introduction

Criminality is clearly costly to victims, their relatives and to societies. However, antisocial behavior can also often be costly to offenders. Consequences of a criminal life-style, such as incarceration and increased exposure to violence, can have negative effects on mating opportunities and survival. Still, criminal behavior may remain in the population despite the risk of adverse consequences if also associated with increased reproductive success as part of an alternative mating strategy. It has been suggested that criminal behavior evolved as a result of a reproductive strategy based on low parental investment reflected in low commitment in reproductive relationships. Rowe, for instance, argued that “crime results from an evolved behavioral strategy that maximizes mating effort and minimizes parenting effort” (Rowe, 1996). This idea rests on the fact that among mammals in general, males in contrast to females have substantial potential to increase their reproductive success by mating with multiple partners (Clutton-Brock, 1991). In humans, the minimal parental investment needed for a male can be perceived as no more than the effort necessary for a successful impregnation. Conversely, since human reproduction requires internal gestation and usually breastfeeding, prolonged maternal care has been essential for offspring survival throughout evolution. This difference in parental investment suggests that securing assistance from males, ideally the father(s), over longer periods of time to increase paternal provisioning is central to the female strategy to increase reproductive success (Clutton-Brock, 1991). The asymmetry between female and male strategies also implies that women will be choosier about whom they mate with than men are (Clutton-Brock, 1991).

Males can respond to females' typical mate preference by complying with the female inclination and invest in offspring, or adopt an alternative reproductive strategy by trying to maximize the number of children along with minimizing parental effort in any of their offspring. Thus, it is possible for males to increase their reproductive success without paying the cost of parental investment either by dishonestly mimicking the courtship behavior of other males that do invest highly in offspring and therefore get to mate, or by forcing females to mate with them (Gross, 1996). This deceitful tactic is often referred to as a “cheater” strategy. According to the cheater theory of criminality, antisocial behavior is a consequence of the human version of a low parental investment reproductive strategy (Ellis & Walsh, 1997). The central notion is that variation in brain functioning that facilitates lifelong rule-breaking behavior is adaptive primarily because of the reproductive fitness advantages these traits have in comparison to reproductive strategies based on high parental investment.

If persistent criminal behavior reflected a reproductive cheater strategy, we would expect male criminals, compared to non-criminals, to invest less in committed relationships and engage more in casual sex. Further, this theory suggests that men committing non-sexual crimes will be more likely to commit sexual offences than individuals not adopting the cheater strategy. Previous studies have shown criminality to be linked to a promiscuous mating style, unstable marriages and lower levels of childcare and supervision (Ellis & Walsh, 2000). More specifically, in a review of the literature Ellis and Walsh found that 50 out of 51 studies investigating associations between mating behavior and criminality reported a positive relationship between criminal behavior and number of sex partners (Ellis & Walsh, 1997). Beaver, Wright, and Walsh (2008) used a gene-based approach and showed an association between number of sex partners and violent criminal behavior through a common genetic pathway engaging the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1) (Beaver et al., 2008). Another study, comprising 674 men, found that carriers of two copies of the same DAT1 polymorphism have significantly more sex partners, as well as significantly higher delinquency scores, than men who had one or no copies (Guo, Tong, & Cai, 2008). This particular gene variant is typically found among "people who need high levels of excitement and stimulation to activate their reward system in the same capacity as those with normally functioning reward systems" (DeLisi, 2009). Further, a British cohort study found that the 10% most antisocial men father 27% of the children (Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, 2003).

We investigated whether there was an association between criminality and outcomes related to the cheater theory (Ellis & Walsh, 1997) in a Swedish total population sample. First, we examined if criminal offenders had a relatively high reproductive success (number of biological children), which is a prerequisite for the cheater theory. Second, we hypothesized that male criminal offenders would be involved more often in short-term mating, less likely to engage in pair-bonded relationships and less reproductively monogamous than male non-offenders. Third, we posited that males convicted of other crimes would commit a majority of all sexual assaults, reflecting the idea that the cheater strategy is associated with forced mating. We investigated these hypotheses in both men and women, to elucidate sex differences in criminality from an evolutionary viewpoint.

Section snippets

Dataset and study population

Using the unique personal identification number provided to all citizens and immigrants upon arrival to Sweden as key, we linked a series of longitudinal Swedish population registers. These were the total population, multi-generation, crime, national patient, prescribed drug, migration and cause of death registers and two sociodemographic databases; the National Censuses (1970, 1980, and 1990) and longitudinal integration database for health insurance and labor market studies (LISA by Swedish

Results

Table 1 shows the prevalence of criminal offending in our study cohort. A total of 27.8% of the males and 9.1% of females had been convicted at least once, whereas 7.7% of males and 1.0% of females had three or more criminal convictions. We present characteristics of convicted criminal offenders and non-offenders in Table 2. Compared to non-offenders, offenders had higher mean fertility, more reproductive partners and more marriages. Expectedly, higher prevalences of substance misuse, mental

Discussion

First, using criminal conviction data for all 4.8 million men and women in the total Swedish population born in 1958–1995, we showed that criminal offending is indeed associated with increased reproductive success compared to a non-criminal lifestyle. We used a sample much larger than that used in the only prior study that directly focused the relationship between number of children and criminality (Lynn, 1995), and also controlled quite thoroughly for potentially confounding variables.

Acknowledgments

HW thanks the Wenner-Gren Foundations for financial support.

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