29 Aug
1994
29 Aug
'94
9 p.m.
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article by:
Linda Mealey
on:
THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current
BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to
suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to
become a BBS Associate, please send email to:
harnad(a)clarity.princeton.edu or harnad(a)pucc.bitnet or write to:
BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542 [tel: 609-921-7771]
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by
anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________
THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY:
AN INTEGRATED EVOLUTIONARY MODEL
Linda Mealey
Department of Psychology
College of St. Benedict
St. Joseph, MN 56374
ABSTRACT: Sociopaths are "outstanding" members of society in two
senses: politically, they command attention because of the
inordinate amount of crime they commit, and psychologically, they
elicit fascination because most of us cannot fathom the cold,
detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others. Proximate
explanations from behavior genetics, child development, personality
theory, learning theory, and social psychology describe a complex
interaction of genetic and physiological risk factors with
demographic and micro-environmental variables that predispose a
portion of the population to chronic antisocial behavior. Recent
evolutionary and game theoretic models have tried to present an
ultimate explanation of sociopathy as the expression of a
frequency-dependent life history strategy which is selected, in
dynamic equilibrium, in response to certain varying environmental
circumstances. This target article tries to integrate the proximate,
developmental models with the ultimate, evolutionary ones. Two
developmentally different etiologies of sociopathy emerge from two
different evolutionary mechanisms. Social strategies for minimizing
the incidence of sociopathic behavior in modern society should
consider the two different etiologies and the factors which
contribute to them.
KEYWORDS: sociobiology, sociopathy, psychopathy, antisocial
personality, evolution, criminal behavior, game theory, emotion,
moral development, facultative strategies
--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is
bbs.mealey). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft.
Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise
you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
-------------------------------------------------------------
To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.mealet
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit
These files can also be retrieved using gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
URL:
ftp//ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.mealey
http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html
gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/1ftp%3aprinceton.edu%40/pub/harnad/BBS
----------
Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers:
ftpmail(a)decwrl.dec.com
and
bitftp(a)pucc.bitnet
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:
help
for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).
JANET users without ftp can instead utilise the file transfer facilities
at sites uk.ac.ft-relay or uk.ac.nsf.sun. Full details are available on
request.
-------------------------------------------------------------