US SCIENCE CONFERENCE:WHITE-COLLAR criminals are equipped with tremendous advantages to help them carry out their work.
Their brain structures are different and this translates into mental attributes that suit their nefarious business.
Structural brain scans showed that two areas in particular were different than in matching controls who had not become involved in credit card fraud, uttering stolen cheques and other financial misdeeds, said Prof Adrian Raine, chair of the department of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.
He was speaking yesterday during a session entitled Nature, Nurture and Anti-Social Behaviour at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting.
It was all part of a new science called “neurocriminology”, he explained.
It involved looking for changes in normal brain structure that could have an effect on a person’s behaviour.
For example, scans have shown that psychopaths tended to have an undersized amygdala, a brain structure where empathy and emotion are processed.
These individuals have a reduced ability to feel the distress experienced by their victims. It was a matter of “bad brain, bad behaviour,” he suggested.
Prof Raine described the results of a preliminary study of 42 individuals – 21 white-collar criminals involved in small-time crime and 21 matched controls. He said there were no bankers involved in the study.
The group of criminals had an altered prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in planning complex cognitive behaviours, personality expression, decision-making and moderating correct social behaviour.
Another structure, the temporoparietal junction which is the area associated with moral decision-making, was also different in the criminals.
This combination also modified the group’s wider physiology, Prof Raine said.
“They have better executive function, which improves their executive skills like planning, regulation and management,” he stated.
They also tend to respond more strongly to physical stimuli due to their enhanced ability to focus, and tend to be more driven, said Prof Raine.
“We are suggesting white-collar criminals have biological advantages.”
Some of these are the very capabilities wanted in any business person yet “not everyone in that position becomes a white-collar criminal”, he said.
There was a fine line between using these advantages for success in business or in criminality.
Neurocriminology raises intriguing ethical issues, Prof Raine suggested.
If altered brain structures can drive bad behaviour then should that be a mitigating factor when sentencing, or should a person be punished for wrongdoing regardless?
He also doubted whether we should try and find ways to reverse these brain changes given their value to politicians and business people.
“Politicians sometimes have to be ruthless, and businessmen need to take risks,” Prof Raine said.