Hit submit too soon. Were these Theresienstadt orphans parentless from birth? Did they have foster parents?
That example wasn’t in reference to peer socialisation. It was in reference to this comment by Lissa
and thus it is wholly relevant, considering it shows us that the most severe form of parental inattention imaginable did not turn these children into criminals. Like I said, they turned out just fine.
Can you come up with any studies that better demonstrate the effects of parental deprivation? I’ll be extremely surprised if you can.
To the best of my knowledge (working from memory here), the reason the Theresienstadt case was so special was that the 4 orphans were separated from all others from an extremely early age.
Well, not exactly a cite, but this is somewhat on point:
In my opinion, this “caring” behavior has been fostered since birth. The child may have witnessed Mother trying to soothe Father’s headaches in the past, or may have seen Father trying to comfort Mother when she’s crying. In the above mentioned case, the child was rewarded for her “caring” behavior by her mother’s hug, thus subtly encouraged into more “caring” behavior.
Even if the parent is not overtly aware that they are teaching the child, kids are constantly being socialized by watching how their parents react to situations. If a mother kisses and soothes a child with a scraped knee, the child learns that sympathy is the correct response to another person’s injury. However, if the mother jeers at her child’s tears, the child is likely to do the same if he sees another child in such a predicament.
Parents begin a child’s socialization. They give a child at least basic “foundation” upon which peers build. Peers simply continue the process, fine-tuning social interactive skills.
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Perhaps. Much of what I have learned about sociology comes from textbooks, and from my sociology-teacher husband. I’ll admit, I’m somewhat leery of new theories, especially since as soon as one is produced, an immediate deluge of debunkers jump into the fray. I tend to be conservative in accepting new theories until they’ve withstood the test of time.
It appears that most current parental deprivation studies have been done on animal subjects, not on humans. (I can certainly understand why.)
I was actually surprised at the amount of feral children I discovered with a casual search. (The site contains links to paranormal phenomenon and “unexplained mysteries” so I’d suggest taking it with a grain of salt.)
Just because their trauma did not manifest itself as criminal behavior does not mean that the children turned out to be “just fine.” I’m sure that they were deeply scarred individuals.
Lissa has already mentioned the feral children site.
The best documented of these cases is that of Genie (if you’re interested and feeling strong, see ‘Genie, a scientific tragedy’, Russ Rymer 1993). This child was kept in a locked room for 13 years deprived of almost all human contact. When she emerged she was studied mainly by linguists trying to test Chomsky’s innate language module hypothesis. She rapidly acquired vocabulary, but not grammar, so Chomsky won, just about. As in all these cases, any conclusions were blurred by uncertainty about whether she had learning disabilities to begin with.
However it’s perhaps worth noting that she showed no “criminal” tendencies and was capable of love for others, which under the circumstances seems more remarkable than any linguistic achievements.
A different example is the case of Mary Bell, a British child who killed two smaller children when she was 11 in 1968. Gitta Sereny’s book, ‘Cries Unheard’ (1998), demonstrates pretty convincingly how extreme parental deprivation and abuse drove this child to violence. Reports from family members did not suggest that this child showed any innate predisposition to violence (and perhaps it would have been in the interest of their reputation to do so, which adds credibility to their evidence).
Very crudely - I suppose you could say the case of Genie supports the nativist camp and that of Mary Bell, socialisation.
Rather rambling post - sorry late at night…
You’re citing feral children as an example of parental deprivation???
The feral children were not just deprived of parental contact. They were deprived of all human contact. We’re already aware that the brain is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of organ; psycholinguistics research shows us that with time we lose the ability to differentiate new phonemes and various pieces of research show us the same thing in regard to other modules of the brain. Citing a piece of research that shows the effects of no socialisation does not in any way discredit my notion of peer socialisation making up for parental deprivation (as Anna Freud argues) or socialisation being done by the peer group (as Harris argues, and I agree.)
The Anna Freud case examines a group of children who were deprived of parental contact, but not of a peer group. This case is the closest to an experimental design as I am aware of.
And Lissa:
Well, you would be wrong in your assumption. They didn’t turn out as deeply scarred individuals. Not only despite the parental deprivation, but despite the fact they lived their first 4 years in a concentration camp.
Your cite is actually supportive of my side of the argument.
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I never argued that peers couldn’t become the primary socializers given a lack of parental socialization. As I said, children whose parents are uninvolved end up being socialized by their friends.
What I was arguing, and you disagreed with, is that parents are the primary socializers of young children, not the peers. Peer socialization is merely a substitution in situations where parental socialization is lacking.
I think, though, that the feral children tie into the argument about genetics. If behavior such as altruism were hard-wired into our genes, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the feral children would display it?
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Cite, please? I’ve been searching for more information, but thus far have only found references to Freud’s study-- no information on the children themselves. Could you please tell their story in more detail?
Before your last post, I was imagining that the children must have been older when they left the camp. Being so young, the damage done to them would have been much more repairable than if they had been pre-teens. At four, the figurative clay is still soft.
I guess I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
I don’t see it as evidence that children are “pre-wired” to sympathize, but that such behaviors have been encouraged. In this case, it was most likely by the parents. In the case of the Theresienstadt children, the peers became the primary socializer, and encouraged the behavior. Now, if a feral child displayed “caring” behavior, that might be evidence of a genetic link, but I’d still have my doubts.
The feral thing.
You don’t understand social identity. The caring behaviour we would look for would be towards the ingroup: the pack, or whoever the feral is with.
If the feral has no group, then your argument is akin to arguing that if I shackle someone’s legs from birth, and they can’t walk, obviously the ability to walk is not innate. Some of the ferals couldn’t walk, because they were strapped in chairs. Others walked on all fours. This does not deny the fact that the ability to walk is innate.
As for your cite:
The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Rich Harris discusses the study in a relevant context. Or see:
An Experiment in Group Upbringing.
I can’t find these any cites on the net either.
Found it.
From Where Is the Child’s Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development Judith Rich Harris
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If I give my sister a cookie, I’m just being “nice” to a member of my group, but if I give a cookie to a stranger on the street, it’s altruism.
Maybe I’m not getting what you’re trying to say but everything I’ve ever read about altruism points to the behavior being aimed at someone * outside* the group, i.e having no direct benefit for yourself, or for the survival of your genes. If I give the cookie to my sister, my genes are benefitting, versus a stranger to which I have no relation.
The camp children were hostile to all outsiders. They had formed a “family” unit consisting of just themselves, and cared for one another just as a family would. It’s not altruism to care for a member of your family.
Nor is it necessarily unusual that they formed the group to begin with. All humans crave identity and stability. We’re social creatures. In their lives, the only “family” (love, kindness, and stability) they had was one another.
Being hostile to outsiders is natural among groups. (Hell, it’s why we have wars and genocide.) If anything, the experience of these children proves my point that it’s through socialization that we learn to be kind to people outside of our group.
That’s a good point, but walking is different from expressing emotion. Someone who has never walked before has problems with muscle strength, balance and coordination. If altruism is an instinct, the urge should survive isolation.
From what I’ve read about the ferals, they required intense socialization to become “normal.” They did not just slide smoothly into human society. They had to be taught social behavior, including, I’m sure, generosity and kindness.
Emotions are just as innate as the ability to walk or see. They regulate reciprocal altruism, which as you noted is essentially synonymous with trading. Trivers’ cognitive arms-race hypothesis shows us how emotions can be hard-wired to regulate reciprocal altruism. The work of Darwin and an American anthropologist in the 60’s (Ekman??) show us that facial expressions are uniform in all known cultures.
Group behaviour is also innate. Despite Piaget’s belief that it wasn’t evident until toddler-hood, current research not only demonstrates group behaviour in infants but also in pigeons.
The parental relationship can be important, but not for the reasons you suggest. Current theories in social cognition suggests that dyadic (2 people) and group (3 or more) relations could be governed by separate modules (Turner, Harris) and the empirical evidence is consistent with this theory. It is environmental influences in group processes that modify personality, not dyadic ones.
This is shown by behavioural genetics. Behavioural genetics succeeds where so many fields of research have failed before: its methodology allows us to evaluate how much of personality is determined by genetic and environmental factors. Studies have put the figure for the genes at 35-65% and the shared environment, the home, gets 0-10% depending on which study you look at. No study with an appropriate methodology has ever found consistent effects of parenting on personality, without allowing for the shared genes and the unshared environment. Empirical evidence from behavioural genetics however has shown any such effects to be minimal, so the onus is on the defenders of the status quo to provide some proof for their more intuitive theories. No such proof exists.
As for unshared environment, shown to be so important by behavioural genetics, the only coherent theory (and it’s a very well supported theory I might add) is Group Socialization. That’s the Harris paper I cited previously. It won the APA award for best paper quite a few years back but unfortunately its implications haven’t quite been embraced by all fields of psychology. Since 1995 it has held up to all attackers, so it’s a sound theory.
I feel obliged to mention the ferals again. It seems you don’t understand what would be a good experimental design with regard to parental deprivation. A good case study would be a kid who has lived a normal life, just without any significant relationship with an adult. An absolutely useless case study is someone who has had no interaction with humans whatsoever.
Also, your view of altruism differs drastically from mine. The altruistic behaviour you’re talking about is rare and highly maladaptive. Any such behaviour would have to be learned and could not be innate (except by extreme chance) so for the extremes of altruism you are entirely correct. However, my personal view is that most “altruism” is still inherently selfish, and is still within the realms of innate behaviour.
If you point out the bits of all that you disagree with, I’ll start another thread (as we have now gone on a complete tangent from the OP). Group socialization theory is probably too big to debate in a single thread since it relies on a huge body of interdisciplinary evidence to support it, so I haven’t written that OP I promised you yet. In the meantime, if you are particularly interested in this stuff and you have access to an academic database, check out the Harris article I cited earlier. It’s quite something.
mrsam, I want to start this out by thanking you for being so polite in this discussion, though we don’t agree. Too many times, I’ve seen debates such as these turn nasty. Some people seem to feel that to disagree with their opinion is to personally insult them.
That said, my main point of contention is the value of environment on socialization. I was incredulous to read that some scholars place less than a ten percent figure on the influence of the home enviornment.
As I said before, I agree wholeheartedly that personality may be innate in each individual-- set from birth, so to speak. However, the home enviornment * hones* the personality, either by discouraging displays of personality flaws, such as selfishness, or by encouraging desirable traits, such as kindness.
I think we all would be difficult to live with if we let our personalities run at large without the self-control taught to us by our socializers. Parents may not give us our personality, but they give us the tools to control it.
For a child with a “normal” home life, peers continue the socialization process. Through our friends, we learn social ettiquette, status, and are exposed to different points of view than the ones espoused by our parents. We make the choice whether to stick to our home’s “values” or to reject them in favor of that of the group.
It’s my opinion that for most people, what we learned in the home will still have a strong influence on those decisions. A child will always rebel, of course, but I think the severity of the rebellion (and the chances it will become “criminal” behavior) is greatly diminished in those who had adequate socialization.
It’s the family bond that makes values “stick.” That bond appears to be tighter in children whose mothers spent large amounts of time with them as infants, and toddlers.
Our parents teach us from our earliest days that rule-breaking has consequences. A very simple, but fundamental lesson that if neglected can cause serious problems. We are also taught to think of others. ("How would you feel if Janie pulled your hair?) In my husband’s work at the prison, he has come across a few individuals who are sincerely puzzled as to why they should care that their actions hurt others. It’s my opinion that a lack of those two lessons is what leads to a great deal of criminal behavior.
Peers play an important role in socialization, but I still disagree that it’s the most important. Again, rebellion will always occur, but I think that how a person will ultimately turn out is based more on family influence than peers.
Your choices for peer groups are dependent on many factors. Socio-economic status is a major one. (You won’t see very many gang members at a Beverly Hills private school.) Athletic ability, intelligence, race, and personality also determine your options, just to name a few. Sometimes, children become members of groups simply because they have no other choice.
I don’t think that a “good” kid can be turned “bad” simply through association with other “bad” kids. (I’m not talking about being caught smoking in the boys room, but about violent “criminal” behavior.) If they do join in, it’s because something in their personality lures them to it, and parental socialization hasn’t protected them from it. A person can only be talked into doing something if at least a little part of them is willing to do it in the first place.
Peers may influence behavior, but ultimately, a child with a “normal” home life will want to keep the approval of his family. He may stray from the path, but parental discipline (or fear of it) and the general ethics instilled in them will generally keep them from going too far.
I’ve read on a couple of occasions the theory that some kids join gangs because they’re searching for structure. In the gang, they find a system of rules, punishments and rewards which may be lacking in their home life. A child who feels neglected may find a sense of belonging.
Had they gotten what they needed at home, would they have joined the gang? All I know is that my husband tells me that very few violent criminals descibe a “normal” home life.
I know this is an old thread and probably jayjay’s no longer here. I figured I’d mention Ted Kaczinski’s death and that it was hard for his brother to figure him out. It always seemed like his family thought he was just writing hypothetically and they didn’t know what he did in his shack. It sounded like his neighbor said misogynistic things where he acted like a stalker. Of course they couldn’t get evidence until after his brother compared his letters to his diatribe they published in the paper.
My point is I can see how it’s hard to point at someone and say they’re going to be a criminal. From my personal example, when I was 6 I beat up this bully and his mother told me I was going to be a violent felon. It turns out I’ve never even gotten even a parking ticket but it’s hard for adults to not label out criminals. I totally get that.
I would imagine some are a product of defective brain functions of some kind, but I would say most become criminals because they have either had no operating system installed at a young age or a very defective operating system installed.
To speak to the question of “what is a criminal?” – my WAG would be that by far the largest number of criminals are the day-to-day venial ones, who simply do what they do as a way to get money. There really is no hard dividing line either between someone who sends you spam email to fool you into sending them money or, more serious, to fool you into allowing them to steal your identity, vs. someone who breaks and enters your home when you’re not there and steals your goods.
Then you can add potential or actual violence to these venial crimes, and things start getting a lot more serious. Drug lords are criminals if they sponsor (or commit) violence to further their ends. But the quantity of such people is lower, and their motivations are probably still mostly venial, plus for some people the power they feel over others when they are willing to commit violence.
Criminals who aren’t venial may be the most destructive, but in my opinion they are a lot more rare. It’s just that we hear more about them.
I think most of the people I have discussed here have an antisocial personality disorder (i.e. sociopathy) to some degree, some a lot more than others. Where this comes from is, I think, much more environmental than inborn, nurture rather than nature. Here is a quote from that noted authority in such things, Psychology Today:
Sociopathy refers to a pattern of antisocial behaviors and attitudes, including manipulation, deceit, aggression, and a lack of empathy for others. (snip) Sociopaths may or may not break the law, but by exploiting and manipulating others, they violate the trust that the human enterprise runs on.
The counter to sociopathy seems to be empathy, as noted in earlier posts. Feelings of empathy may well be more easily developed by some people than by others, but I think everyone has to learn it somehow, if they are going to feel it.
criminal mind developed?
Did it ever occur to you that it’s not developed but we are born with it?
And the approach is not to learn how criminal minds are developed but how
a mind that can resist / avoid the path of carrying out criminal acts is developed.
To say something is “criminal” implies that there is some kind of moral absolutes of right and wrong that exists. If you don’t believe that, then the term “criminal” means nothing except whatever you want it to mean via majority vote. Spanking your kids was never a crime and now suddenly it is? You see what I mean. Criminal can mean anything if moral absolutes don’t exist. Therefore we are all born with criminal minds. It’s not developed. The question is, how does one develop a good mind that can keep the criminal at bay over your lifetime? (answer is: you can’t. Everyone is guilty).
I agree, a criminal will often get a chemical reward for behavior that would make a healthy person feel bad. I spent over 30 years helping drug addicts and many times hard core criminals assimilate back into society. I have a few success stories and a lot more stories not worth mentioning. If you can help steer them into something where they become valued for the right reasons it does often improve them.
I wonder why bed wetting always shows up on the list. I cannot make the logical connection between bed-wetting and criminality. Unless it’s that bed-wetters (often) receive harsh parental responses to that behavior and do those parental reactions/responses somehow precipitate criminality.
There are no reputable economists who advocates hiding information and misleading people. Usually quite the opposite in fact as a healthy economy tends to require open exchange of information and trust that people will adhere to the agreements they make.
I’ve done a bit of work in corporate fraud detection and compliance stuff and studied a bit about how the criminal mind develops. One theory is that the following three things come into alignment:
(1) Some kind of perceived pressure, usually financial . It could be self-induced like living beyond one’s means, or as a result of circumstances such as health issues or some sort of financial loss
(2) Opportunity - The person is in a role where they have access to or are entrusted with funds or some other mechanism to gain from the system
(3) Usually followed up by some sort of rationale so as not to conflict with their values. Examples include:
- Everyone is doing it
- I’m owned this
- I’m not hurting anyone
- This money won’t be missed