Enhanced Age 3 Fear Conditioning in Successful Adult Criminal Offenders

• In Event: Successful and Unsuccessful Criminal Offenders: Developmental and Biopsychosocial Processes.

Abstract

There is a dearth of information on “successful” criminal offenders who escape detection, and even less research on biological risk and protective factors. Here we examine whether fear conditioning at age 3 years is associated with successful and unsuccessful criminal offending at age 39 years. Participants were drawn from a longitudinal birth cohort from the island of Mauritius. Autonomic fear conditioning was assessed in a laboratory at age 3, with skin conductance recorded to CS+ (reinforced) and CS- (unreinforced) auditory stimuli. Criminal offending was assessed using a self-report crime questionnaire at age 39. Criminal offenders were divided into successful and unsuccessful groups on the basis of whether they had been caught at age 23 and age 39, and compared to non-criminal controls. There was a main effect of group on conditioning (p = .012), but also a significant group x stimulus interaction (p - .018). A breakdown of the interaction indicated that successful criminals show superior conditioning to unsuccessful criminals (p = .014) and to controls (p = .06). We hypothesize that enhanced fear conditioning in successful offenders results in a heightened ability to detect environmental cues associated with punishment, resulting in escape from law enforcement agencies.

Authors

• Yu Gao, Brooklyn College, CUNY

• Adrian Raine, University of Pennsylvania

• Olivia Choy, Nanyang Technological University