Enhanced Susceptibility to Context: A Promising Perspective on the Interplay of Genes and the Social Environment

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate the importance of incorporating gene by environment (G × E) interactions into criminological research. In pursuit of this aim, the chapter is organized in the following way. We begin by providing a brief primer on genetic variation. We then turn our focus to the explosion of G × E research that has occurred in the past decade. These studies find that genetic variation often interacts with environmental context to influence the probability of various behaviors, including delinquency and crime. Importantly, in many, and perhaps most, of these studies the genetic variable, unlike the environmental variable, has little if any main effect on the outcome of interest. Rather, the influence of the genetic variable is limited to its moderation of the effect of the environmental construct. Such research does not undermine the importance of environmental factors; rather it shows how social scientific explanations of human behavior might be made more precise by incorporating genetic information. Finally, we consider various models of gene–environment interplay, paying particular attention to the differential susceptibility to context perspective. This model of G × E posits that a substantial proportion of the population is genetically predisposed to be more susceptible than others to environment influence. We discuss the methodological and theoretical implications of this perspective and argue that it is particularly relevant to the field of criminology.