Brian B Boutwell
Biographic Data
| ID | 250464 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian B Boutwell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian B |
| FAMILY NAME | Boutwell |
| SIGNATURE | BOUTWELL B B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sam Houston State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1649-5311 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 191 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Resurrecting Individual Differences: Toward a Theory of Police Officer Behavior
The past century has produced abundant scholarship on policing. Glaringly absent, despite thousands of studies, has been an explicit attempt to build an interdisciplinary and causal theory of police behavior. Although theories about various aspects of policing exist, as a general rule they are cut-off from the insights of other behavioral sciences. There remains a need for a causal theory capable of explaining police behaviors and outcomes. We pr…
Judith Rich Harris and child development: 25 Years after The Nurture Assumption
Is reproductive development adaptively calibrated to early experience? Evidence from a national sample of females
Many developmental theories have not been sufficiently evaluated using designs that control for unobserved familial confounds. Our long-term goal is to determine the causal structure underlying associations between early environmental conditions and later psychosocial and health outcomes. Our overall objective in this study was to further evaluate predictions derived from applications of life history theory to female reproductive development, key…
Same-Sex Relationships and Criminal Behavior: A Total Population Study in The Netherlands
Sexual minority groups experience elevated risk across a range of adverse outcomes. Previous studies from the USA showed that these risks include contact with the criminal justice system for sexual minority females but not for males. This study examined whether this relationship between sexual minority status and criminal behavior was also found in a more secular country like the Netherlands with more progressive attitudes toward sexual minoritie…
Are there Psychopaths in White-Collar Jobs
Psychopathy has been an important topic of study in psychology and increasingly in criminology. The adverse, antisocial behavior of psychopaths has been studied for quite some time, yet there remains less work on how psychopaths may (or may not) succeed in other life domains, including in particular employment. On this score, the literature provides competing hypotheses with respect to whether psychopaths will excel in the workplace – especially …
Exploring the Genomic Architectures of Health, Physical Traits and Antisocial Behavioral Outcomes: A Brief Report
A widely replicated finding across the behavioral sciences is that antisocial behaviors correlate with an array of health problems. Less clear, however, is the precise nature of this association. There is reason to suspect that a direct causal link exists between incarceration-a consequence of some antisocial behaviors-and certain negative health outcomes, for instance. However, it might be the case that broader phenotypes like antisocial behavio…
The Dr. Norman White special issue on criminal justice scholarship & race: A brief introduction
On the positive relationship between breastfeeding & intelligence
A wealth of literature has examined the association between breastfeeding and the development of cognitive abilities in childhood. In particular, at least some evidence exists suggesting that breastfed children perform better on measures of intelligence later in life. Although a correlation appears to be present, fewer observational studies have included appropriate adjustment for potentially confounding variables; maternal intelligence, maternal…
Genetic confounding of the relationship between father absence and age at menarche
Rethinking the transmission gap: What behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology mean for attachment theory: A comment on Verhage et al. (2016)
Traditional attachment theory posits that attachment in infancy and early childhood is the result of intergenerational transmission of attachment from parents to offspring. Verhage et al. (2016) present meta-analytic evidence addressing the intergenerational transmission of attachment between caregivers and young children. In this commentary, we argue that their appraisal of the behavioral genetics literature is incomplete. The suggested research…
Advancing the Science of Social Work: The Case for Biosocial Research
Social workers have long advocated for using a biopsychosocial model for social work practice. Although the biopsychosocial framework to understanding and treating problems is ubiquitous to social work practice, the biological domain has historically been neglected. In recent years, however, social work practitioners and scholars have begun to embrace findings from biosocial research to inform theory and practice. Despite the emerging use of find…
On the Heritability of Criminal Justice Processing
An impressive number of researchers have devoted a great amount of effort toward examining various predictors of criminal justice (CJ) processing outcomes. Indeed, a vast amount of research has examined various individual- and aggregate-level predictors of arrests, incarceration, and sentencing decisions. To this point, less attention has been devoted toward uncovering the relative contribution of genetic and environmental effects on variation in…
Intelligence and early life mortality: Findings from a longitudinal sample of youth
The current study examined whether adolescent IQ predicted risk for mortality by the age of 32. Analyses of data from the Add Health revealed that IQ was related to mortality risk, such that respondents with relatively lower IQs were significantly more likely to experience early life mortality when compared to respondents with relatively higher IQs. This association remained statistically significant even after controlling for a host of covariate…
Sexual Orientation and Involvement in Nonviolent and Violent Delinquent Behaviors: Findings From the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health
Exploring the Relationship Between Violent Behavior and Participation in Football During Adolescence: Findings From a Sample of Sibling Pairs
The current study examined the association between playing high school football and involvement in violent behaviors in sibling pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The analysis revealed that youth who played high school football self-reported more violence than those youth who did not play football. Quantitative genetic analyses revealed that 85% of the variance in football participation was the res…
Biosocial Research in Social Work Journals: A Systematic Review
Background: Despite an emphasis on a biopsychosocial understanding of human behavior and the relevance of biosocial research to social work practice, it is unclear whether social work is contributing to biosocial research and knowledge. Methods: Systematic review procedures were employed to locate studies that included biological variables (e.g., genetic or physiological factors) related to behavior and were published in a social work journal bet…
Molecular genetic underpinnings of self-control: 5-HTTLPR and self-control in a sample of inmates
Mathematical Proof Is Not Minutiae and Irreducible Complexity Is Not a Theory: A Final Response to Burt and Simons and a Call to Criminologists
Enlisting in the Military: The Influential Role of Genetic Factors
Given that enlistment in the U.S. military is completely voluntary, there has been a great deal of interest in identifying the various factors that might explain why some people join the military, whereas others do not. The current study expanded on this line of literature by estimating the extent to which genetic and environmental factors explained variance in the liability for lifetime participation in the military. Analysis of twin pairs drawn…
Aggression and Crime
The topic of human aggression has elicited the attention of scholars for centuries. Despite our best efforts, the causes of aggression in our species have dodged anything even resembling a simple explanation. Sociologists and criminologists have a long history of stressing the social and cultural contributors to aggressive behavior. While important, this focus on social factors has largely resulted in a casting out of biology when contemplating t…
On the consequences of ignoring genetic influences in criminological research
Demonstrating the Validity of Twin Research in Criminology
In a recent article published in Criminology , Burt and Simons () claimed that the statistical violations of the classical twin design render heritability studies useless. Claiming quantitative genetics is “fatally flawed” and describing the results generated from these models as “preposterous,” Burt and Simons took the unprecedented step to call for abandoning heritability studies and their constituent findings. We show that their call for an “e…
Prenatal smoking and genetic risk: Examining the childhood origins of externalizing behavioral problems
Genetic and Nonshared Environmental Factors Predict Handgun Ownership in Early Adulthood
Handgun ownership has been the focus of much criminological research due to the over involvement of handguns in violent crime. This literature has, however, overlooked the potential role genetic factors play in the decision to purchase a handgun. The current study analyzed the genetic and environmental influences on handgun ownership among a large sample of young adult twins from the United States. Analyses revealed a stronger concordance for gun…
Genetic and environmental influences underlying the relationship between low self-control and substance use
Demonstrating the Validity of Twin Research in Criminology
In a recent article published in Criminology , Burt and Simons () claimed that the statistical violations of the classical twin design render heritability studies useless. Claiming quantitative genetics is “fatally flawed” and describing the results generated from these models as “preposterous,” Burt and Simons took the unprecedented step to call for abandoning heritability studies and their constituent findings. We show that their call for an “e…
On the consequences of ignoring genetic influences in criminological research
Examining the Genetic Underpinnings to Moffitt's Developmental Taxonomy: A Behavioral Genetic Analysis
In recent years, criminological research has observed an increase in studies examining different offending trajectories. Much of this research has been guided by Moffitt's (1993) developmental taxonomy of life-course persistent offenders, adolescence-limited offenders, and abstainers. Moffitt (1993) argued that the etiologies of these different pathways could be traced to several biosocial factors, including perhaps genetic factors. To date, rese…
Genetic and environmental influences underlying the relationship between low self-control and substance use
Low Resting Heart Rate and Rational Choice: Integrating Biological Correlates of Crime in Criminological Theories
Analyzing the origins of childhood externalizing behavioral problems
Drawing on a sample of twin children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; Snow et al., 2009), the current study analyzed 2 of the most prominent predictors of externalizing behavioral problems (EBP) in children: (a) parental use of spankings and (b) childhood self-regulation. A variety of statistical techniques were employed, and, overall, the findings can be summarized into 2 points. First, the results show that the…
On the relationship of past to future involvement in crime and delinquency: A behavior genetic analysis
Mathematical Proof Is Not Minutiae and Irreducible Complexity Is Not a Theory: A Final Response to Burt and Simons and a Call to Criminologists
The Relationship Between Self‐control and Language: Evidence of a Shared Etiological Pathway
Converging lines of research suggest that self‐control and language may be inextricably linked. No empirical research has ever examined this proposition, however. We address this gap in the literature by analyzing a sample of twin pairs from a nationally representative data set of children. The results revealed three broad findings. First, diminished language skills were predictive of low self‐control both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. Se…
The role of broken homes in the development of self-control: A propensity score matching approach
Sexual Orientation and Involvement in Nonviolent and Violent Delinquent Behaviors: Findings From the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health
Physical punishment and childhood aggression: The role of gender and gene–environment interplay
A large body of research has linked spanking with a range of adverse outcomes in children, including aggression, psychopathology, and criminal involvement. Despite evidence concerning the association of spanking with antisocial behavior, not all children who are spanked develop antisocial traits. Given the heterogeneous effects of spanking on behavior, it is possible that a third variable may condition the influence of corporal punishment on chil…
Are there Psychopaths in White-Collar Jobs
Psychopathy has been an important topic of study in psychology and increasingly in criminology. The adverse, antisocial behavior of psychopaths has been studied for quite some time, yet there remains less work on how psychopaths may (or may not) succeed in other life domains, including in particular employment. On this score, the literature provides competing hypotheses with respect to whether psychopaths will excel in the workplace – especially …
Biosocial Research in Social Work Journals: A Systematic Review
Background: Despite an emphasis on a biopsychosocial understanding of human behavior and the relevance of biosocial research to social work practice, it is unclear whether social work is contributing to biosocial research and knowledge. Methods: Systematic review procedures were employed to locate studies that included biological variables (e.g., genetic or physiological factors) related to behavior and were published in a social work journal bet…
Molecular genetic underpinnings of self-control: 5-HTTLPR and self-control in a sample of inmates
Interaction of 5HTTLPR and Marijuana Use on Property Offending
This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine whether a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene (SHTTLPR) moderates the effects of marijuana use on property offending. The results reveal that 5HTTLPR interacts with marijuana use to predict significantly higher levels of property offending for African American females. The interaction coefficient is not statistically significant for Caucasian male…
On the Heritability of Criminal Justice Processing
An impressive number of researchers have devoted a great amount of effort toward examining various predictors of criminal justice (CJ) processing outcomes. Indeed, a vast amount of research has examined various individual- and aggregate-level predictors of arrests, incarceration, and sentencing decisions. To this point, less attention has been devoted toward uncovering the relative contribution of genetic and environmental effects on variation in…
Exploring the Relationship Between Violent Behavior and Participation in Football During Adolescence: Findings From a Sample of Sibling Pairs
The current study examined the association between playing high school football and involvement in violent behaviors in sibling pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The analysis revealed that youth who played high school football self-reported more violence than those youth who did not play football. Quantitative genetic analyses revealed that 85% of the variance in football participation was the res…
Genetic risk factors correlate with county-level violent crime rates and collective disadvantage
Is reproductive development adaptively calibrated to early experience? Evidence from a national sample of females
Many developmental theories have not been sufficiently evaluated using designs that control for unobserved familial confounds. Our long-term goal is to determine the causal structure underlying associations between early environmental conditions and later psychosocial and health outcomes. Our overall objective in this study was to further evaluate predictions derived from applications of life history theory to female reproductive development, key…
On the positive relationship between breastfeeding & intelligence
A wealth of literature has examined the association between breastfeeding and the development of cognitive abilities in childhood. In particular, at least some evidence exists suggesting that breastfed children perform better on measures of intelligence later in life. Although a correlation appears to be present, fewer observational studies have included appropriate adjustment for potentially confounding variables; maternal intelligence, maternal…
Enlisting in the Military: The Influential Role of Genetic Factors
Given that enlistment in the U.S. military is completely voluntary, there has been a great deal of interest in identifying the various factors that might explain why some people join the military, whereas others do not. The current study expanded on this line of literature by estimating the extent to which genetic and environmental factors explained variance in the liability for lifetime participation in the military. Analysis of twin pairs drawn…
Prenatal smoking and genetic risk: Examining the childhood origins of externalizing behavioral problems
The Relationship Between Self‐control and Language: Evidence of a Shared Etiological Pathway
Converging lines of research suggest that self‐control and language may be inextricably linked. No empirical research has ever examined this proposition, however. We address this gap in the literature by analyzing a sample of twin pairs from a nationally representative data set of children. The results revealed three broad findings. First, diminished language skills were predictive of low self‐control both cross‐sectionally and longitudinally. Se…
Interaction of 5HTTLPR and Marijuana Use on Property Offending
This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine whether a polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene (SHTTLPR) moderates the effects of marijuana use on property offending. The results reveal that 5HTTLPR interacts with marijuana use to predict significantly higher levels of property offending for African American females. The interaction coefficient is not statistically significant for Caucasian male…
Maternal Cigarette Smoking during Pregnancy and Offspring Externalizing Behavioral Problems: A Propensity Score Matching Analysis
A body of empirical research has revealed that prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke is related to a host of negative outcomes, including reduced cognitive abilities, later-life health problems, and childhood behavioral problems. While these findings are often interpreted as evidence of the causal role that prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke has on human phenotypes, emerging evidence has suggested that the association between prenatal exposure to to…
The role of broken homes in the development of self-control: A propensity score matching approach
Physical punishment and childhood aggression: The role of gender and gene–environment interplay
A large body of research has linked spanking with a range of adverse outcomes in children, including aggression, psychopathology, and criminal involvement. Despite evidence concerning the association of spanking with antisocial behavior, not all children who are spanked develop antisocial traits. Given the heterogeneous effects of spanking on behavior, it is possible that a third variable may condition the influence of corporal punishment on chil…
Examining the Genetic Underpinnings to Moffitt's Developmental Taxonomy: A Behavioral Genetic Analysis
In recent years, criminological research has observed an increase in studies examining different offending trajectories. Much of this research has been guided by Moffitt's (1993) developmental taxonomy of life-course persistent offenders, adolescence-limited offenders, and abstainers. Moffitt (1993) argued that the etiologies of these different pathways could be traced to several biosocial factors, including perhaps genetic factors. To date, rese…
On the relationship of past to future involvement in crime and delinquency: A behavior genetic analysis
Low Resting Heart Rate and Rational Choice: Integrating Biological Correlates of Crime in Criminological Theories
Genetic and Nonshared Environmental Factors Predict Handgun Ownership in Early Adulthood
Handgun ownership has been the focus of much criminological research due to the over involvement of handguns in violent crime. This literature has, however, overlooked the potential role genetic factors play in the decision to purchase a handgun. The current study analyzed the genetic and environmental influences on handgun ownership among a large sample of young adult twins from the United States. Analyses revealed a stronger concordance for gun…
Genetic and environmental influences underlying the relationship between low self-control and substance use
Genetic risk factors correlate with county-level violent crime rates and collective disadvantage
Analyzing the origins of childhood externalizing behavioral problems
Drawing on a sample of twin children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B; Snow et al., 2009), the current study analyzed 2 of the most prominent predictors of externalizing behavioral problems (EBP) in children: (a) parental use of spankings and (b) childhood self-regulation. A variety of statistical techniques were employed, and, overall, the findings can be summarized into 2 points. First, the results show that the…
Aggression and Crime
The topic of human aggression has elicited the attention of scholars for centuries. Despite our best efforts, the causes of aggression in our species have dodged anything even resembling a simple explanation. Sociologists and criminologists have a long history of stressing the social and cultural contributors to aggressive behavior. While important, this focus on social factors has largely resulted in a casting out of biology when contemplating t…
On the consequences of ignoring genetic influences in criminological research
Demonstrating the Validity of Twin Research in Criminology
In a recent article published in Criminology , Burt and Simons () claimed that the statistical violations of the classical twin design render heritability studies useless. Claiming quantitative genetics is “fatally flawed” and describing the results generated from these models as “preposterous,” Burt and Simons took the unprecedented step to call for abandoning heritability studies and their constituent findings. We show that their call for an “e…
Prenatal smoking and genetic risk: Examining the childhood origins of externalizing behavioral problems
Biosocial Research in Social Work Journals: A Systematic Review
Background: Despite an emphasis on a biopsychosocial understanding of human behavior and the relevance of biosocial research to social work practice, it is unclear whether social work is contributing to biosocial research and knowledge. Methods: Systematic review procedures were employed to locate studies that included biological variables (e.g., genetic or physiological factors) related to behavior and were published in a social work journal bet…
Molecular genetic underpinnings of self-control: 5-HTTLPR and self-control in a sample of inmates
Mathematical Proof Is Not Minutiae and Irreducible Complexity Is Not a Theory: A Final Response to Burt and Simons and a Call to Criminologists
Enlisting in the Military: The Influential Role of Genetic Factors
Given that enlistment in the U.S. military is completely voluntary, there has been a great deal of interest in identifying the various factors that might explain why some people join the military, whereas others do not. The current study expanded on this line of literature by estimating the extent to which genetic and environmental factors explained variance in the liability for lifetime participation in the military. Analysis of twin pairs drawn…
Intelligence and early life mortality: Findings from a longitudinal sample of youth
The current study examined whether adolescent IQ predicted risk for mortality by the age of 32. Analyses of data from the Add Health revealed that IQ was related to mortality risk, such that respondents with relatively lower IQs were significantly more likely to experience early life mortality when compared to respondents with relatively higher IQs. This association remained statistically significant even after controlling for a host of covariate…
Sexual Orientation and Involvement in Nonviolent and Violent Delinquent Behaviors: Findings From the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health
Exploring the Relationship Between Violent Behavior and Participation in Football During Adolescence: Findings From a Sample of Sibling Pairs
The current study examined the association between playing high school football and involvement in violent behaviors in sibling pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The analysis revealed that youth who played high school football self-reported more violence than those youth who did not play football. Quantitative genetic analyses revealed that 85% of the variance in football participation was the res…
Genetic confounding of the relationship between father absence and age at menarche
Rethinking the transmission gap: What behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology mean for attachment theory: A comment on Verhage et al. (2016)
Traditional attachment theory posits that attachment in infancy and early childhood is the result of intergenerational transmission of attachment from parents to offspring. Verhage et al. (2016) present meta-analytic evidence addressing the intergenerational transmission of attachment between caregivers and young children. In this commentary, we argue that their appraisal of the behavioral genetics literature is incomplete. The suggested research…
Psychology (33 works) · Developmental psychology (23 works) · Medicine (18 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Biology (12 works) · Cognitive Abilities and Testing (12 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (12 works) · Clinical Psychology (9 works) · Criminology (9 works) · Sociology (9 works)