BIOLOGY
Take a group of antisocial adolescents--teens prone to fighting, thievery, and all-around rudeness--and check up on them 10 years later. Some will have continued in their antisocial trajectory, becoming full-fledged criminals. But others will now be law-abiding adults.
How do troubled kids turn their lives around? According to psychologist Adrian Raine, Ph.D., their nervous system gives them an edge.
Criminals may generally have lower physiological arousal levels than the rest of us, studies suggest. Their hearts beat less rapidly, their slow brain waves are more pronounced. To compensate for their underresponsive nervous system, some researchers think, such folks are more likely to engage in sensation-seeking activities--which often means crime.
Hooligans who cause their antisocial antics, though, may be nervous nellies. When Raine studied British lads of varying demeanors, crime desistors actually had higher than normal arousal levels, he reports in the American Journal of Psychiatry (Vol. 152, No. 11). That is, their brains overreacted to stimuli. So they may have found a life of crime a tad too stressful.
