Social Capital, Crime, and Human Nature

Abstract

In the present article, a reinterpretation of the concept of social capital is forwarded that incorporates the principles of evolutionary psychology. The authors propose that social capital, from the evolutionary psychological perspective, is any social relationship that, directly or indirectly, helps an individual maximize reproductive success through promoting survival, the acquisition of resources, mating, or the promotion of offspring to sexual maturity. The evolutionary psychology–informed construct of social capital is applied to several theoretical domains in the field of criminology to demonstrate how this perspective can bridge theories on the proximate causes of crime with the “ultimate” causes of human nature and human behavior.