#480 Vibeke Ottesen: The Evolution of Homicide, Filicide, and Neonaticide
Dr. Vibeke Ottesen is a Norwegian criminologist with an interest in how nature and nurture combined create human behavior. She has a popular science blog – Biosocial - where she comments on news, scientific findings and literature relevant to her subject – more often than not with an evolutionary informed approach to understanding the subject matter. She has held numerous lectures on the benefits of an evolutionary informed approach to understanding the cross-cultural sex and age differences in anti-social and criminal behavior.
In this episode, we talk about criminal behavior from an evolutionary perspective. We first get into some of the basics of evolutionary theory that help explain criminal behavior. We talk about cross-cultural evidence about criminal behavior, and more specifically homicide, and also about some of the complications that arise from differences in how countries collect data. We discuss the importance of distinguishing between different categories of homicide. We talk a lot about the Scandinavian countries during the interview, particularly how gender equality might influence rates of intimate partner violence and homicide, and the gender equality paradox. We explore sex differences in criminal behavior. We discuss filicide and neonaticide, and why there are differences between biological parents and stepparents. We also tackle suicidal behavior. Finally, we discuss ways of preventing homicide, and also why it is so hard to communicate evolutionarily-informed science to the general public.
Time Links:
Intro
An evolutionary perspective into criminal behavior
Are criminal behaviors adaptations?
Differences in data collection
Homicide categories
The Nordic countries, gender equality, and homicide rates
Sex differences in criminal behavior
The gender equality paradox
Filicide, and biological parents and stepparents
Preventing homicide
Communicating evolutionarily-informed science
Follow Dr. Ottesen’s work!
Follow Dr. Ottesen’s work:
Blog: https://bit.ly/3sRWbyD
Works on ResearchGate: https://bit.ly/2SMtqXi
Twitter handle: @biososial