Dr. Richard Tremblay is a Canadian child psychologist and professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, and psychology at the University of Montreal where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Child Development. His research has focused on the development of aggressive behavior in children and the potential for early intervention programs to reduce the chances of children turning to crime in adulthood. In 2017, he received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his work studying delinquency in children, making him the first Canadian to receive this prize. In this episode, we discuss his research on physical aggression and juvenile delinquency, what surprised him of his findings, risk factors that lead to aggression in adults, experimental interventions with mothers to decrease aggression, and the biology of aggression in children. I hope you enjoy this episode. If mental health is part of your self-care plan this year, which it should be, there s nothing more important, than to check out and try Headspace. Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app that can help you feel better and less stressed. This is the best deal offered right now! Headspace - Headspace has a 3-minute SOS meditation for you! Need help falling asleep? Headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule anytime. You deserve to feel happier and more relaxed. Go to headspace.com/JBP That s Headspace? This is Headspace's meditation made simple, right here. I ve tried one of them with me, and I m not into crystals. And they ve tried it. -- JBP -- I ve got a free one-month trial with access to a library of meditations for every situation for every that s a good deal offered now by Jbp. JBP? Jbp -- JRP -- let me know what you re up to help me know how to help you be the better of that s better than that s that s up to it. JBP! -- JRP? -- you ve got it, too say it! -- thank you, I ve checked out JBP, too have it on Jbp? ...and so on and so on, so you know you ve done it, right to be that s not just that, right I have it, I ll say it, you re not alone.
00:07:46.000Richard starts by pointing out that studies of aggression often fail to separate physical
00:07:56.820aggression from verbal aggression, indirect aggression, microaggressions, let's say, relational
00:08:05.040aggression, opposition, competition, and other so-called externalizing behaviors. So maybe you
00:08:12.300could start by commenting about on that, Richard, because one of the key features of your work is
00:08:18.300the specificity of your definitions. And we need to know about the reason for that.
00:08:24.420Yes. Well, when I started doing research, I was doing research on juvenile delinquency, essentially,
00:08:37.900the general problem of juvenile delinquency. I did my PhD thesis on this. And I was brought
00:08:51.540on to study physical aggression because it appeared to be a narrower type of problem, easier to study
00:09:06.040than simply juvenile delinquency. And as I worked on that problem of aggression, I realized that people
00:09:18.120were using the word aggression to mean all sorts of things. And I sort of slowly zoomed in on the physical
00:09:30.500aggression research, thinking that it would be much simpler to study. And I did that in part because I was
00:09:42.080interested in looking at the early signs of problems with physical aggression. And when you start looking at
00:09:53.760young children, very young children, you become amazed to see how frequently they physically aggress each other.
00:10:05.980And they are much less sophisticated than elementary school children or adolescents or adults. So the action is
00:10:18.740really on into physical aggression. And as we measured the physical aggression in early childhood and
00:10:31.200developmentally over time, it became very obvious that what we were all thinking that aggression
00:10:43.680increased with age and sort of peaked in adolescence, late adolescence. We showed that physical
00:10:56.960aggression was at its peak in terms of frequency around age, between age two and age three.
00:11:08.880We were looking at in daycare centers. And I finally discovered that the place in the world where you're most at risk
00:11:23.440of being physically aggressed is in a daycare center when you're between age two and age three. The amount of physical
00:11:33.440aggressions is incredible. Of course, they are not well coordinated, and they are not very strong. So the damage is not the same
00:11:47.440damage as a physical fight when you look at adolescence. But the frequency of physical aggression
00:11:57.440is clearly there. And to a certain extent, it changed my way of looking at this problem of aggression
00:12:12.400aggression throughout development from very early childhood until adulthood.
00:12:22.400Okay, so you adopted a narrow focus to begin with, and you concentrated on physical aggression. And if I remember correctly, and please do correct me,
00:12:32.400the markers were so the even more basic markers and measurable markers were kicks, hits, bites, and steals. Is that correct?
00:13:55.400Yes, yes, yes, it is. Whether it's war or being physically aggressed by a neighbor, it creates more damage, and it's a threat to your life.
00:14:15.400Yes, so, okay, so it's useful to simplify it, so that it could be measured and observed.
00:14:22.400But it was also a move that allowed you to get right to the heart of what was important about antisocial behavior
00:14:29.400And, okay, okay, so, and then you, it's so easy to jump over these things, even in your papers, because these ideas are revolutionary in a sense that isn't immediately obvious
00:14:43.400in the cautious manner in which they're couched. Because people do assume, for example, that children learn aggression,
00:14:49.400and that, and as you pointed out, that aggression is much more common, say, among adolescent males, or young adult males. But even much to your surprise, that isn't what you found.
00:15:01.400So I would like to ask you two questions about that. Like, why do you think you were surprised? What had you gone in there expecting?
00:15:08.400And how does this violate the assumptions that people, including scientists, generally make about aggression?
00:15:14.400Well, you cited Rousseau and Bandura. The research on aggression made me realize that their perspective on we are born good,
00:15:35.400and it's your environment that makes you bad, and it's your environment that makes you bad didn't work when you were looking at one of the worst things you call bad is physical aggression.
00:15:50.400Because we were following children from essentially birth, and the children that we were following then, they're now in their 40s, and we are still following them.
00:16:07.400We showed that between birth and adulthood, the time at which you use physical aggression against others most often is between two and three.
00:16:26.400And the reason it's not at one or six months, it's because by the time you're two and three, you're much more able to aggress others in terms of you can run, you can hit, you can kick.
00:16:45.400Well, as you don't see that at six months, but these behaviors are clearly there at the start.
00:16:54.400And as we followed the children over time up to adulthood, we saw very clearly that the frequency of physical aggression was going on, was dropping.
00:17:13.400There was less and less frequency of physical aggression up to adulthood.
00:17:23.400So the idea that we learn from our environment to aggress doesn't fit the data at all.
00:17:36.400It's rather, with time, we learn not to physically aggress because everybody, even those who were physically aggressing very often, with time, the frequency decreases.
00:17:55.400There is more damage if you get hit by an adolescence than by a two-year-old.
00:18:03.400But in terms of frequency, we learn not to use physical aggression as we get older.
00:18:13.400Okay, so we might say that this constitutes a delayed victory for the philosopher Thomas Hobbes.
00:19:36.400And so this idea has been there for a long time.
00:19:41.400But there has been this big resistance to believe that we are born to live like animals, and that with time, we learn to live in a civil society.
00:19:56.400Okay, so do you have any sense, Richard, of why that resistance manifested itself?
00:20:04.400And I would also say it continues to, because it seems to me that the default view that people are good, especially children, innately,
00:20:13.400and that they're corrupted by exposure to bad models and by society, I would say that's the default view.
00:20:20.400And it's certainly the default view on the left end of the political spectrum.
00:20:24.400So why do you think that that became so dominant if the data, even the observational data, was there thousands of years ago, let's say, and certainly is there in the scientific literature now?
00:20:38.400Yes, well, I guess it's a normal reaction of humans to not to accept that from an evolutionary perspective, we are animals that have sort of learned to live together in a
00:21:07.400in a more sophisticated way than monkeys and chimpanzees.
00:21:17.400But it's very clear that if we take a Darwinian perspective to evolution, it makes a lot of sense.
00:21:27.400Darwin was also one of those who said at one point, I am looking at the way my children behave, and it's clear that my children are using physical aggression within the first year of life.
00:21:54.400And he wrote quite a lot about the behavior of his children, and it inspired him in terms of understanding human development.
00:22:10.400Okay, so back to back to Hobbes, he's sort of the antithesis of Rousseau.
00:22:14.400And Hobbes believed that in the state of nature, life would be nasty, brutish and short, and that it was only socialization that made us civilized.
00:22:22.400And your data essentially support that viewpoint, except it's more complex, because Rousseau wins to some degree, because you've tracked out three developmental pathways.
00:22:33.400So, although, on average, young children are more aggressive than older children and adolescents, if you look, your research and others indicates that if you look at the population of young children, all children are not equally violent.
00:22:49.400And so, maybe you could walk us through that.
00:22:54.400Yes, there are important differences between children.
00:22:58.400Those who are most aggressive, use physical aggression most often early in life, are, I don't have the data in front of me, but it's not much more than 20%, 25%.
00:23:20.400And a lot of children are not using physical aggression.
00:23:25.400And there is the difference between males and females.
00:23:30.400We get similar developmental trajectories, but essentially most girls do not use physical aggression.
00:23:43.400Okay, so your data, the data I reviewed this morning suggested that about 30% of children use very little aggression to begin with.
00:24:14.400So, those who are likely to be aggressive in adolescence were also likely to be aggressive as children, but all children, including the aggressive children, tend towards less aggression as they mature.
00:24:26.400But also, again, it's useful to repeat this.
00:24:30.400So, 30% show very little aggression across the board, right from childhood onward.
00:24:35.40050% are in the mixed group, using aggression sometimes when they're children, but that declines precipitously as they age.
00:24:42.400And then there's 17%, they decline as well, but the population of aggressive adolescents is disproportionately drawn from those children who were exceptionally aggressive in their earliest infancy.
00:25:12.400And so, the people, the aggressive individuals, the biggest risk factor I think you identified for being in the more aggressive category, the most aggressive category was gender, sex.
00:25:28.400So, if you're a boy, it's much more probable.
00:25:35.400I don't remember exactly, but if you've looked at it this morning, you must be closer, close to that.
00:25:46.400Yeah, and then you showed, okay, so it was, they were more likely to be male, and then there were other important contributors as well.
00:25:56.400They were more likely, for example, to have mothers who did not complete their high school education.
00:26:02.400That was the next, the next most important risk factor.
00:26:07.400What other risk factors for that early aggression did you identify?
00:26:12.400Well, in most of the studies, we are showing that a lot of the characteristics of the boys who have problems are characteristics related to their mothers having problems.
00:26:37.400Both psychological and social problems.
00:26:50.400And I've, I've, I've called that the Hydra problem in the sense that girls who have adjustment problems are likely to have children and especially boys who will have important problems.
00:27:15.400And what do you mean by adjustment problems, if you're going to characterize what you've observed about the mothers who are more likely to have aggressive boys in particular, and also to not control it as well as they develop.
00:27:30.400How would you describe a typical mother?
00:27:32.400Well, girls, girls who fail in school, girls who have emotional problems, girls in the, all, everything that we've measured, for example, in terms of problems with smoking,
00:27:59.400with drugs, almost every problem that you can mention, there is a tendency for girls who have these problems to have children and especially boys who will have difficulty.
00:28:21.400It's not only difficulties with physical aggression, but their children will have more problems in social adjustment, in succeeding in school.
00:28:37.400And so over time, it's been, it's become quite clear to me that if we want to help children in terms of their development and high risk children.
00:28:52.400The best strategy is to support, to give support to girls early on who have adjustment problems in the school system, because they are the best predictors of boys who will have the problems that we are talking about.
00:29:18.400So there is this intergenerational problem.
00:29:28.400Girls are more involved in helping their children grow up than males.
00:29:35.400But also, it's related to what's happening during pregnancy.
00:29:44.400So if you have a girl who, during pregnancy, is smoking, taking drugs, using alcohol, it's quite clear from simply a medical, biological perspective that this child's brain will be affected in a negative way.
00:30:08.400And that child will have much more difficulty controlling himself.
00:30:15.400And that's quite clear, it's relatively clear that the boys will suffer from that perspective more than the baby girls.
00:30:30.400But the baby girls will reproduce the same type of problems that their mother had.
00:30:42.400So then, so that hypothetically, then the aggression problem among the boys will occur among the daughters of the girls you're talking about a generation later.
00:30:52.400You said it's transmitted intergenerationally, so girls that you're talking about have girls and they don't do well either, even though it's not so manifest in aggression, but maybe their children are also at risk.
00:33:23.400I think the approach to getting closer to understanding exactly what's happening is when we are using a prevention approach, an experiment in terms of prevention.
00:33:47.400And maybe it's time to introduce this approach.
00:33:52.400Part of the studies that I've been doing are longitudinal studies where we simply follow thousands of families from pregnancy until the children's adult life.
00:34:08.400But a more interesting approach is, but more difficult, is experimental interventions.
00:34:20.400So in those experimental interventions, researchers think up of a way of treating the problem, of preventing the problem.
00:34:36.400And there have been very nice experiments that have been done on helping young women who have behavior problems, emotional problems, and become pregnant in helping them, supporting them during pregnancy and after birth.
00:34:59.400So that we can see to what extent we can help their children adjust better to their environment.
00:35:12.400And David Orwell in the United States has been doing what I think are the best studies on the experimental studies on helping high risk girls.
00:35:30.400And the results, he's been doing this for at least 25 quarter of a century.
00:35:38.400And so we have data on the outcome, the long-term outcome for the children.
00:35:45.400And it's very clear that giving support to young pregnant women who have behavior, mental health problems, is helping their children in the long run to adjust much better to their environment.
00:36:06.400And interestingly, the latest data that I've seen is showing that it's helping the baby girls more than helping the baby boys.
00:36:20.400So it may take at least two generations to be able to help the boys that would have major problems if their mothers were not being helped.
00:36:36.100So what is it that, what does the support that's offered to these mothers that works, consist of?
00:37:07.340I mean, there's a huge body of literature, and again, correct me if I'm not up to date on this, indicating that on average, children without fathers, stable fathers, do much worse across a whole variety of indices than children with stable fathers.
00:37:23.340And now, you could make a couple of cases for that.
00:37:25.820You could say that maybe the women that you're talking about are less likely to attract a stable partner, and so it isn't actually the presence of the man that's the determining factor.
00:37:37.900It's the fact that instability is more likely in a relationship if the young mother is unstable herself.
00:37:45.140What do you think about, and you're not seeing a role for fathers precisely in the developmental trajectory of aggression, so what do you, how do you comprehend the fatherlessness literature and the literature you're discussing?
00:38:03.120Well, part of the problem is assortative mating, and there's very interesting data coming out from, I think it's in Sweden,
00:38:18.200at least one of the Scandinavian countries where it's very clear, because they have access to the data from the whole population, the data is pretty good, and there's clearly assortative mating among people who have psychological problems.
00:38:44.880Okay, so you'll have to define that for everyone.
00:38:48.020Assortative mating means that you are mating with a mate that has some of the same characteristics as you have.
00:39:02.060So, if we are talking, say, for mental illness, if girls who have mental illness problems are more likely to have children with men who have mental illness problems.
00:39:21.540So, do you suppose that's a consequence of access across hierarchies?
00:39:28.740So, if you're put into a socioeconomic rung in part because of your impaired mental ability, let's say, either cognitively or with regards to mental disorder,
00:39:40.500that the people that you're exposed to and likely to initiate a relationship are much more likely to be drawn from that strata.
00:39:47.040Yes, well, yeah, there is assortative mating related to the social class that you are in.
00:39:58.180So, people tend to mate with people from the same social class, but within a social class, there appears to be also assertive mating for having problems.
00:40:14.280And to a certain extent, it makes sense that if you're mentally, you have mental health problems, you are not attractive to someone who doesn't have problems.
00:40:31.740So, people who don't have mental health problems tend to mate with people who don't have mental health problems, and those who have mental health problems tend to mate with, I mean, this is not, we're talking about probabilities here.
00:40:52.940Right, right, right. So, it becomes very difficult to parse apart the biological influences and the influences of impaired physical health and the sociological and family environment influences.
00:41:06.900What do you see as the role of, as the beneficial or harmful role of fathers in the upbringing of children in relationship to violence?
00:41:20.480Well, there is certainly the model in the sense that if the parents, the father or the mother, are using physical aggression with the children and are using physical aggression among themselves,
00:41:45.560it's very hard for a child to learn not to use physical aggression.
00:41:54.680Right, well, so is it modeling of the aggression or is it failure to model the inhibition of aggression?
00:42:00.320Well, it seems in some sense more likely, because the thing about aggression, especially at the level that you study, is it's not that sophisticated in some sense.
00:42:10.780It's not that hard to learn to hit. It's sort of there. What's hard to learn is to implement a, like, if you want someone's toy, you want to play with their toy and you're little,
00:42:20.420you can hit them and take it, or you can figure out a more sophisticated strategy so that you can both play together.
00:42:26.060But that's actually hard, and that, in principle, would take modeling and proper reinforcement and all of that.
00:42:32.060And so, part of this, I think, is a model of simplicity versus sophistication.
00:42:37.940And then, we talked about this years ago, too, and I'd like to know how your thoughts have stayed the same or changed over time.
00:42:44.840Do you think that the children who are becoming, that children, as they become less aggressive, are inhibiting their aggression,
00:42:52.520or do you think they're integrating it into more sophisticated behaviors?
00:42:57.680Well, yeah. I think it's both. It's both in the sense that from a cognitive perspective, as we develop, we become cognitively more sophisticated,
00:43:21.020and we understand the consequences of these behaviors. If you hit and you get hit, and with time, you learn that you won't get hit as often if you're not hitting.
00:43:39.140So, and there is that control over yourself, and there are the models.
00:43:52.240So, I don't think it's one or the other. It's a number of factors that bring you to understand and to be able to control your behavior and not use aggression and use more sophisticated ways.
00:44:18.940When you see parents who have been successful in bringing their more aggressive child's aggression under control developmentally,
00:44:30.400have you developed any insight into the nature of the disciplinary strategies they're using?
00:44:35.980Because I was looking at the outcome studies, the intervention outcome studies today before we talked,
00:44:42.080and I thought, what happens in families that are functioning well when a child manifests in aggressive behavior?
00:44:50.660What sort of disciplinary strategies are implemented to encourage that child, let's say, to use his words instead of hitting, or something like that?
00:45:02.300And in my observations of parents who don't know what they're doing with their children,
00:45:06.400they're often left completely adrift when their child manifests in aggressive behavior.
00:45:11.500They seem to have absolutely no idea about how to respond to that in a way that makes it less likely in the future.
00:45:17.640Or sometimes they even covertly reinforce it.
00:45:21.460So, are the micro-analysis of disciplinary strategies there yet, or is it still vague and unknown?
00:45:29.280Well, there are efforts at looking at that, but from my perspective, this area, this is so complex.
00:45:47.860There are so many factors that are involved that it's very hard to dissect in the way that would be satisfying to answer the questions that you are asking.
00:46:10.200Let's come back to the experimental interventions.
00:46:15.140The experimental interventions with pregnant women who appear to be at risk because they have behavior problems,
00:46:31.860The work that David Oles has been doing, the interventions last from early pregnancy
00:46:41.780until the child's second year of life.
00:46:47.040It visits, it's home visitation by nurses.
00:46:53.180And these interventions with these women have, you look 20 years down the line,
00:47:03.660and their girls are adapting much better than the control group girls that didn't get these two years of intervention.
00:47:14.620So, what we can see from these experiments is that it's possible to change the life of the children of these girls that had adjustment problems.
00:47:34.880But getting at exactly what was done within these two years, there is a general push towards, let's do everything we can to help them.
00:47:53.900And it's clear that it works, there is something, it doesn't tell us the minute details of what happened in the brain of the child or during pregnancy.
00:48:09.120It's telling us these interventions will save us money and will help part of individuals who have problems in the long run.
00:48:25.200So, what do the interventions consist of?
00:48:27.480So, what would a girl who was a pregnant girl who was enrolled in one of these programs expect?
00:48:34.520What would she receive as a consequence of the intervention?
00:48:37.380Well, she will receive from the nurse visits at home, and the nurse will counsel her into everything that she has to decide
00:48:55.480in terms of the quality of what she eats during pregnancy and in the interaction she has with other people.
00:49:03.900Well, everything that's difficult for them, she can share with the nurse, and the nurse will help solve the problem.
00:49:17.240Well, it sounds like the provision of a grandmother, like a competent grandmother in some sense.
00:49:23.900Yes, a mother, yeah, it's not like psychotherapy where you follow exactly the way the person is thinking.
00:49:38.140It's more of a – and these nurses, with time, learn to deal with these different problems.
00:49:49.880There is another approach, which could be done at the same time as the nurse home visitation program.
00:50:03.380I think that stopping at age 2 is too early, and I've been pushing for getting another type of intervention,
00:50:21.060at least from age 2, because we know that age 2 is the time when the children have physical aggression – the more – for physical aggression.
00:50:36.700They have – their problems are at the top at age 2, and so the other approach that could be a good complement is daycare, quality daycare.
00:50:51.120And the experiments that have been done with daycare, quality daycare, are showing very long-term effects also on the children.
00:51:03.740I think the best approach that has not been tried yet is to use the nurse home visitation jointly with the daycare, quality daycare interventions.
00:51:25.580The quality daycare interventions have shown that high-quality daycare has long-term effects and even intergenerational long-term effects.
00:51:51.480Do you think that daycare has particularly positive effects on the kids from mothers whose maternal behavior is impaired?
00:52:03.740So in Head Start, one of the hypotheses about why Head Start, the wide-scale anti-poverty initiative in the U.S.,
00:52:13.720one of the reasons that it had the successful outcomes it did have, which included less high school dropout,
00:52:20.680and fewer teen pregnancies and fewer teen pregnancies and less arrests, if I remember correctly, although no impact on cognitive development.
00:52:28.260Part of the theory about why that worked was that children in particularly bad families, let's say, particularly impaired families,
00:52:36.180got out of those families to some degree when they were put in a different maternal, so to speak, maternal setting.
00:52:43.560So is it removal, or is it something that's being added?
00:52:47.560And do you see the benefit of daycare across the spectrum of children, or is it specific to the more at-risk kids?
00:52:54.840Well, the best results, long-term results, comes from Jim Eckman's analysis of the data for the second generation.
00:53:09.500So it's clear that the high-quality, it was the high-scope intervention that was done in Michigan,
00:53:20.140shows that the children who were in this high-quality daycare compared to a control group were better off as they became adults,
00:53:34.540but also their own children, compared to the children of those who did not go to the daycare, were much better off.
00:53:46.600Okay, so what are the elements that characterize high-quality daycare, and at what ages and for how long?
00:53:52.320Yeah, well, the good quality daycare helps the children learn in terms of interest, social behavior, of interacting,
00:54:09.120but also in terms of cognitive development.
00:54:12.660It's clear, I've been thinking recently, looking at the impact of the COVID-19,
00:54:22.180that we are going to put a lot of money on helping old people die later.
00:54:33.640There's the baby boomers are going to be in the daycare homes soon, and there's going to be a lot of people in the daycare.
00:54:45.820And what happened during the epidemic will sort of push us to put more resources into helping old people in daycare centers,
00:55:00.640in centers for, yeah, it's sort of daycare centers for them.
00:55:07.340But we have all these children that need daycare, and quality daycare is equivalent to the school system.
00:55:20.200And it's amazing that we are not providing free daycare in the same way that we're providing free kindergarten
00:55:33.200and free elementary school and free high school.
00:55:38.560Children are at their best in terms of learning during the preschool years.
00:55:46.920And so we should be investing massively into getting all children into high-quality daycare.
00:55:58.520That will provide, they will be better prepared to benefit from elementary school and from high school and from university.
00:56:08.240It's really amazing that our societies have not, are not providing free quality education from essentially birth onwards.
00:56:23.200And we know from the research on cognitive development that the years where our brains are more open to learning is during the early years.
00:56:42.080So let me ask you a couple of questions about that.
00:56:45.140I mean, there are factors, obviously, that stand in the way.
00:56:49.200I mean, I worked in the daycare business for a while when I was very young and developing standards for daycare in Alberta.
00:56:56.800The younger the children, the higher the ratio of teachers to children necessary, right?
00:57:02.920So if you have two-year-olds in daycare, you need something approximating one teacher per three two-year-olds.
00:57:10.960And so it becomes expensive very rapidly.
00:57:13.940If you want a qualified teacher, you need to spend $40,000 a year, let's say, to have someone with university education.
00:57:25.360And then you can double that for the infrastructure.
00:57:27.920So it's about $30,000 per child per year at that level for quality daycare.
00:57:34.440And certainly that's so much money that many people would not be able to afford that if it was there, you know, if they had, especially if they had a couple of kids.
00:57:44.240And so do you, so that's part of the reason it doesn't happen, I presume.
00:57:49.160And then the question also arises is whether children who are coming from families who are intact and, let's say, psychologically healthy, to the degree that that's possible,
00:58:04.480is there an additional benefit for those children to be placed in daycare?
00:58:09.300Or is this something that's more specifically appropriate for the children who are at risk, for that 17%, let's say, who are developmentally, who are aggressive and who also have family structure that isn't optimal?
00:58:23.260Yeah, well, it's the work by Ekman is showing that it's the cost benefit analysis is in favor of doing this for the children who have, who need more support.
00:58:42.900Yeah, well, I think I read recently that it's $350,000 a year to keep someone in prison.
00:59:03.960So, I mean, if you put together the home visitation to high-risk pregnant women, and that, I mean, pregnant women, they go and see doctors.
00:59:18.220They go when they become pregnant, and it's easy to identify who needs help and who doesn't need help.
01:11:29.380So you, you won this 2017 Stockholm prize in criminology and the Scandinavians have done a tremendous amount of long-term high quality work on criminology and aggression and all of that.
01:11:40.600So you're obviously receiving a fair bit of attention from your peers.
01:11:44.640How has your work been received broadly among sociologists and all of the other members of disciplines that are, that are, that have some focus on criminality and aggression?
01:11:56.660Well, I, you know, I was surprised when I, uh, heard that I was getting the, uh, the Stockholm prize.
01:12:06.340Um, the Stockholm prize is, um, the Stockholm prize is given by an international, it's sort of the equivalent of, it, it's meant to be the equivalent of the Nobel prize for, uh, for criminology.
01:12:19.400Uh, and I'm not a criminologist, uh, uh, uh, I was trained as an educational psychologist, um, and I was surprised that they gave me this prize because, uh, criminology has been, is, I mean, it's closer to sociology.
01:12:42.940It's, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's a social science, more social than psychology is, um, right.
01:12:52.920So it's concentrating on group determinants of behavior, economic factors and, and, and, and social factors rather than intrinsic psychological factors at the level of the individual.
01:13:05.040And so, um, the idea that we are, uh, we, we are born good and it's the environment that makes us bad is, is more the way criminologists would look at life than the fact that we, we have, we are born to survive in the jungle.
01:13:32.720And so, um, and the environment makes us adapt and adjust to, uh, uh, a less violent environment.
01:13:42.580I was, I was surprised that, um, I was getting the, the award because my, my work has been more, uh, uh, psychological and to a certain extent, uh, criticizing the, the perspective that, um,
01:14:02.720uh, we are, uh, uh, society, um, is, is, is not, uh, making us bad, but, um, but, um, but by and large making us better.
01:14:19.980Um, uh, and, uh, I guess that there is clearly in criminology, uh, um, people are recognizing,
01:14:32.720more and more, um, um, the, the psychological perspectives, uh, of human, uh, development and there is clearly an openness to the type of work that we have been doing, uh, both in terms of the experimental work.
01:14:54.340Uh, it's very hard for people to, um, um, say that, uh, this is only words.
01:15:03.220When you do an experiment, you have a control group and you show the long-term effects, uh, of, of these interventions.
01:15:14.340Well, I also think it's, it's harder to, um, what, avoid what the data is indicating if the data results have also come as a surprise to the researcher.
01:15:27.100I mean, you said, and I mean, that's been my experience constantly as a research psychologist is that I find out things that not only did I not expect that I really didn't like.
01:17:15.960Well, I've, um, over the years, I've, uh, tried many times, uh, to convince, uh, I, I managed to convince one very rich person.
01:17:29.340I was a rich man to support, uh, uh, and to, to, to, to support the work that we were doing.
01:17:38.140And it's in his, his, his environment that convinced, uh, over time, uh, made, made so much trouble that we had to drop it, um, to, to drop this, uh, this research.
01:17:52.840Not because he didn't want it, but he, one morning he said, Richard, I don't get the support from the people around me.
01:18:25.880Uh, and, um, he was telling me, let's go, let's do it.
01:18:32.920Um, but after a while, uh, he said, I'm getting too much negative, uh, comments about, about what you're doing.
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01:22:20.440Is it focused on the idea that, the unpalatable idea that there is a biology of aggression, let's say, or that it's early onset and innate in people?
01:22:30.100Or, like, I'm very curious about this because I see these sorts of hypothetically ethical objections to scientific endeavor popping up more and more frequently everywhere.
01:22:41.480And it doesn't surprise me because the fact that we were ever able to do genuine scientific research at all is a complete bloody miracle.
01:22:49.740I mean, it's only been around for 300 years and it's only happened once.
01:22:56.440But what are the obstacles that he faced and you faced, let's say, as a consequence of your critics?
01:23:03.540Well, the consequences are that, for me, are that I think we have the means to advance knowledge.
01:23:20.440So, it's like medicine, but we don't have the support from the research agencies don't have enough money to support these interventions.
01:23:40.060So, you either get the money from someone who's very rich, who wants to change the world, or you get support from the Ministry of Education, from the Ministry of Health.
01:23:53.860And each time I've sort of almost got it, got the support, it was taken away for political reasons.
01:26:32.360Well, from the criminology and social, that, and the social sciences in general, that was the main criticism in the sense that the social sciences are more based on a Rousseauian approach to understanding who we are
01:27:00.440than the biological science and the psychology from a biological perspective.
01:27:12.800But I guess part of that, as you know well, is personality of the people who go into different fields.
01:27:25.800We go into a field where we feel at ease with the way the majority are thinking, and it's very hard to change the way people think.
01:27:41.560Well, that's why we need science and research and experiments, because we're so hard to teach that we need the data to be, and to be hit over the head with it repeatedly before we can alter our presuppositions.
01:27:53.800But what you said earlier in our conversation is that it's relatively rare that you find something that is sort of opposite to what you think, and you accept it.
01:28:15.800And you say, oh, I had not thought things were like that.
01:28:23.720No, you have to train graduate students for like five years before they can do that.
01:28:41.320But it's so satisfying when you sort of look back and you say, I was going that way, and look where I'm completely the opposite of where I thought I should be going.
01:28:56.920And people need to understand that that is satisfying.
01:29:07.760The way I was looking at things is the wrong way.
01:29:15.500And so I think that's what science provides.
01:29:19.880If you're doing science not to confirm what you think, but doing science to learn new things and understand things that you did not understand before.
01:29:35.720Well, one of the things that shaped the way I think, I guess there were two things.
01:29:41.500One was the realization, and that was partly as a consequence of being exposed to Joan McCord's work in Somerville, because that was an early intervention program for antisocial behavior and other at-risk behaviors that made things worse.
01:29:58.500Much to her surprise, her continual personal surprise, I mean, that shaped the entirety of her career, that because they did a broad scale intervention with at-risk kids.
01:30:10.500And yet the outcome showed that the experimental group did worse on almost every outcome measure.
01:30:16.520And the conclusion was that they sent the kids out of the city to summer camp together.
01:30:21.600And that seemed to be a fatal error, essentially, grouping them together made them much more prone to aggression, but also all sorts of mental illnesses.
01:30:30.340And so it was evident whenever you talked to Dr. McCord, how shocked she was that that had occurred.
01:30:37.180And she spent a lot of her time after that telling social scientists, look, don't be so sure that your stupid intervention is going to produce the results that you wish it would.
01:30:50.580The world is a lot more complicated than that.
01:30:52.600And so once you start to understand that your a priori axiom might do a tremendous amount of damage if it is allowed untrammeled access to the broader culture, it tends to make you much more conservative as a research designer and thinker.
01:31:09.240And that should, you know, it's very difficult and scary to have one of your axioms violated because you have to do a lot of reconsideration.
01:31:18.400But it's also very frightening to know that you could be an agent of catastrophe despite your well-meaning efforts.
01:31:25.480And that's actually the most likely outcome when you do a social science intervention because it's very hard to make things better and it's really easy to make them worse.
01:31:35.460So you also showed that you've also delved into the biology of this and in a variety of interesting ways.
01:31:43.340There's the basic biology and so maybe we could talk a little bit about the biology of aggressive behavior and its dysregulation.
01:31:52.380So I'll start that off and I've been very attracted by the behavioral neuroscientists, Panksepp and Jeffrey Gray, Yak Panksepp and Jeffrey Gray particularly.
01:32:02.980And they've basically shown that we have modules, neuropsychological modules, neurophysiological modules for our basic emotions and motivations and fear and surprise and disgust and play for that matter, hunger, sex drive, defensive aggression, predatory aggression,
01:32:26.760which I think is more what you're studying, is that aggression in the service of an aim rather than defensive aggression.
01:32:34.400And so these modules are there right from the beginning.
01:32:40.200They manifest themselves in individually different ways and then they're brought under control or integrated as people develop.
01:32:46.860What do you see as key to the biological understanding of the kinds of aggression itself, but also of the kinds of differences in aggression that you're studying?
01:32:57.520I must admit that I have not been focused on the biological dimensions, except once I understood about epigenetics, I sort of turned to look at the importance of epigenetics.
01:33:24.960And so you were interested in the intergenerational transmission or of aggressive behavior.
01:34:26.300No, with Michael Meany here at McGill University.
01:34:33.480And Moisey, there was a group of geneticists.
01:34:39.320That group of geneticists was working on human development.
01:34:48.960And so Moisey came and showed us the mechanism, the epigenetic mechanisms of mothering, that rats that are well licked at birth, their brains are changed.
01:35:12.820Sometimes it has an impact on gene expression and they live alone.
01:35:20.300Yeah, well, if they're licked, they're cared for.
01:36:07.180And most of the geneticists around the table were saying, this is incredible.
01:36:16.160And they were sort of not really accepting the explanation that Moishi was giving of facilitating gene expression and influencing brain development.
01:38:10.440And so we've been doing epigenetic studies of the children that we are following.
01:38:25.540And we've been showing that the children who are sort of chronic aggressives have, we see differences in epigenetic expression.
01:38:42.060So we've done that with a small sample of boys in our sample.
01:38:49.600And the results have been confirmed in a larger longitudinal study in Great Britain, where they've shown that the quality of mothering is impacting gene expression in early childhood
01:39:14.780and has long-term consequences on behavior during early adulthood.
01:39:21.740Now, in this paper that was published in Nature, it's an interview with you.
01:39:39.060And Suomi's research indicates that postnatal adversity, so that be maternal disruption in the maternal bond, affects more than 4,000 genes.
01:39:52.660It's one-fifth of the genome, and that it tends to cluster in certain chromosomal regions.
01:39:57.340And also that it alters expression of a gene that Suomi's group had linked to the function of serotonin, which is like the conductor of the entire neurological symphony, a very, very crucially important neurotransmitter.
01:40:13.580And so you also, you ran a parallel research pathway with Suomi as well.
01:40:21.200And was that related to the one that you did, that you ran with Moishe?
01:41:06.040So it was all about the attachment of the child to the mother.
01:41:11.920So the brains of these monkeys had been saved.
01:41:17.000And so Steve Suomi said, well, let's look at the epigenetic differences for these monkeys that were separated at birth and those who weren't separated.
01:41:31.480So it's, it's, it's a wonderful way of showing that separation from your mother at birth has behavioral consequences, but it also has important consequences on gene expression in your brain.
01:41:53.700So it's even, in some sense, it's even more fundamentally important.
01:41:56.960And so do you, do you think, do you think that the, the disruption of the mother-child relationship that you see in the families that fail to inhibit the expression of aggression, do you think that that's akin to maternal deprivation?
01:42:13.380It's, it's just a lesser, I mean, you can imagine a continuum of, of maternal care with absolute separation at one end and perfect bonding at the other.
01:42:22.180There's going to be a continuum and more impaired mothers have a, have a less, um, the, the, the disruption in the behavior is akin to partial, to partial separation from the mother.
01:42:37.060I mean, psycho, psychoanalysts, psychologists have always made much of the necessity of the Eric Erickson, for example, as well of the absolute necessity of that initial bond.
01:42:49.100And that, and that's associated with, well, with really basic behaviors, touch, play, like fundamental behaviors.
01:42:56.580And you see, for example, studies showing that, I remember these studies of mothers breastfeeding, um, depressed and non-depressed mothers breastfeeding.
01:43:06.520And the videos were sped up and you could see the non-depressed mothers and the baby who was breastfeeding in this kind of dance where one would move and then the other would move and the, and then the mother would move.
01:43:18.180And there's this synchrony and reciprocity already emerging in the course of breastfeeding that was disrupted among the depressed mothers and their children.
01:43:27.280And, and, and, and so you can trace the development of that reciprocity back way, way to the beginning.
01:43:33.300And I, you know, I think it definitely manifests itself in, in the highly social structuring of such things, such primordial things as feeding might also be a reason why it's the mother's behavior.
01:43:45.740That's so crucial in the, in the early stages, because she's so integrally involved in that early reciprocity.
01:43:51.900Yes. And so that's after birth, but you can imagine that even during pregnancy, you have these different effects on what the mother is living is affecting the development of the brain of the child in utero.
01:44:13.220Yeah. Well, you wonder if like, if the postnatal environment is harsher, let's say, and less welcoming, are the epigenetic transformations producing preparation for existence in a much more Hobbesian world?
01:44:28.060Yes. Well, that's one, that's one hypothesis that, that you, your brain is prepared to survive in a very tough world compared to others who had a more gentle environment during pregnancy.
01:44:49.060Right. So the assumption would be that, in some sense, the assumption that your biology is making is that perhaps the reason the mother's behavior is altered in a negative way is because she is genuinely in a negative environment.
01:45:04.800That is a harsher environment. And so aggression, perhaps in a harsher environment, is associated with a higher probability of, of, of survival.
01:45:15.740But you, but you, you did indicate, we talked about this just a trifle. You don't have evidence suggesting though, that the more aggressive kids are doing better in their group of, of rejected children, let's say, because I always wonder, is there a parallel hierarchy? There's obviously a hierarchy in prison.
01:45:35.800Yes. And so if, if, if you look at men in prison, what is it that the men who are doing better are doing? Are they the more violent criminals? Are they the more aggressive people? Or is it even in prisons? Does reciprocity?
01:45:50.780I mean, obviously, I mean, obviously, if you have a gang, loyalty is still rewarded, and you're going to be looked on very badly if you don't maintain the integrity of your gang. There's a certain risk. That's, that's what, that's the socialized violent pattern, as opposed to the just chaotic violent pattern.
01:46:12.360Do you, do you, do you think it's a developmental mechanism gone astray that the epigenetic transformation constitutes, or is it, is it a parallel form of adaptation?
01:46:21.040Well, I, I don't know. It's, there's all these very nice things that need to be studied and, and understood.
01:46:37.720So it's, for, for those who are interested in psychology, there's a lot of interesting research that needs to be done in the future.
01:46:54.880And so, let's, let's, maybe we can, we can close this off with a bit of discussion about the, the career of a psychological researcher.
01:47:04.200It's, it's, it's not something that people know a lot about.
01:47:07.880I mean, what's, what, how, how would you evaluate your career?
01:47:16.200Has it been, has it been what you wanted it to be, and why?
01:47:20.520What, what, what's been compelling and interesting about it?
02:02:49.760Richard, are the girls who are more likely to use indirect aggression? Are they specifically the mothers who are most likely to give rise to aggressive boys?
02:02:59.240Or, or, or is it, is it more general, um, what lack of optimal function, something like that? Or how specific it is, is it to the proclivity for aggression?
02:03:11.240Well, um, we, we have, uh, data, um, up to age 40 in terms of how successful, uh, these children, uh,
02:03:29.240became as adults and the teacher reports, uh, of, uh, these behaviors, hyperactivity and aggression are very good predictors of how much money people will have in terms of, uh, of, of win on the job market, uh, when they are in their forties.
02:03:56.240Right. So that's hierarchical position in the socioeconomic pyramid, essentially.
02:04:01.100And do you remember the effect sizes just out of curiosity? What, what kind of correlations are you managing to produce between the teacher reports of kindergarten behavior and, and outcomes at 40?
02:04:16.040Okay. Well, the fact that they're significant at all is, is dead relevant because that's a, that's a huge gap in time.
02:04:22.240Yeah. And I mean, the only thing I can think of that would be that stable perhaps would be the incidence of aggressive behavior because it tends to be really stable, but also general cognitive ability because it tends to be extremely stable as well.
02:04:34.400Yeah. So hyperactivity, uh, impulsivity, aggression in kindergarten, those who are really not in relatively good control are at high risk of failing in school and failing for, for the rest of their lives.
02:04:55.900And this tells us that we can, we can rely on teacher reports and we should use that to give services, uh, to children early on.
02:05:10.540And, and our experimental work has shown that, that if, if you rely on these assessment and you give support to these high risk children in early elementary school, it will change their lives.
02:05:27.120And it's not being done systematically enough.
02:05:34.320It's interesting, you know, cause I, I talked to Bjorn Lomborg a while back and he's put together multiple teams of economists to rank order world problems, serious world problems by the potential return on investment in spending money to solve them.
02:05:51.280And frequently what comes up at the top of the list are interventions in early childhood to increase early childhood health, health, particularly, uh, nutrition, et cetera.
02:06:03.980It's a, it's a, the ROI is return on investment is like 250 to one.
02:06:08.760It's remarkable, but you're saying something quite similar, which is, you know, this is, this is an intelligent plan.
02:06:14.980And it would be so nice to see public policy increasingly informed by a combination in some sense of science and economics.
02:06:23.640And, and you could also see that that could produce, at least in some cases, consensus across ideological barriers.
02:06:30.840It's like, well, really, you, if you're conservative, you really want more criminal adolescents and young males, probably not, you know, anything to reduce violent criminality seems to be a plus.
02:06:43.180If you're on the left side of the spectrum, you think, well, those are disenfranchised people, uh, mothers and, and, and those families.
02:06:51.240And so devoting resources to the amelioration of that problem seems to be ethically demanded, not just justified.
02:06:58.400And so, well, hopefully that's the purpose of public education, right?
02:07:03.740Is that we can make this information as broadly known as possible that, and so maybe I'll sum it up a bit and you can add anything you want.
02:07:11.580And so your research has indicated that, um, aggression, which, especially physical aggression, hitting, kicking, biting, stealing, um, is not precisely species typical behavior because most children, young children, don't engage in that except sporadically.
02:07:30.040There is a population that does it more, uh, uh, uh, regularly and predictably with greater frequency.
02:07:38.120They tend to come from disturbed maternal environments.
02:07:42.120Um, there are interventions that can ameliorate that.
02:07:45.540They're cost effective from a return on investment point of view, and they have broad positive effects.
02:07:51.900The effects of the, um, suboptimal maternal environments are, uh, are, uh, what would you call it?
02:08:02.660You see the detrimental effects of a disturbed maternal environment across a wide range of behaviors, including propensity to violence.
02:08:10.400There's a multi-generational proclivity, and that's all accompanied by biological changes that are quite profound,
02:08:16.960and that also may have multi-generational consequences.
02:08:20.980That, and then I'd add to that the gender difference, uh, that, that there are patterns of aggression that characterize males more particularly,
02:08:29.100although some females, and, and patterns that characterize females, although also some males.
02:08:34.140And the ones, and the, and the, and it also seems to be easier to ameliorate the, uh, tendency towards aggression in girls than it does in boys.
02:08:44.940That's, that seems to be about, that seems to be a reasonable coverage of, cover of what we've, of what we've talked about.
02:08:52.060Anything that you want to add to that, or that you think people should know that we haven't talked about, that you know about?
02:08:57.820Yeah, well, I think we've covered, uh, most of it.
02:09:01.980Um, I, there's nothing that, um, I can think of that we've missed, although we probably missed a few things, but I can't think about it.
02:09:19.940Well, thank you very much for talking to me today, and, and for walking through this.
02:09:24.860I hope people, I presume, I expect that people will find it extremely interesting, and illuminating, and surprising, and practically useful, and also, I would say, hopefully, inspiring.
02:09:38.560You know, it's, it's so nice to hear you talk about what you've discovered, and why it's relevant, but also that engaging in the process of learning all of this,
02:09:49.180has been, um, deeply meaningful philosophically and practically, and that, that you can speak of excitement with your, about your research career, and about the people that you've mentored,
02:10:02.020and the entire process ranging across all of the elements of the scientific process, and that you view that in retrospect as, well, that you're still doing it, first of all, because you love it,
02:10:12.360and in retrospect, you think it was a wonderful way to spend your life, and so, hooray for all of that, and, you know, you, despite,
02:10:19.900and this is something that's very positive, too, is despite the counter-cultural, um, what would you say, results of your research,
02:10:30.320you've actually been remarkably successful at gaining research money on a compared, on a comparative basis, and of publishing,
02:10:38.340and, like, you could get this out there. The scientific endeavor is robust enough so that even findings that don't run in the direction that people might like do tend to be generated and,
02:10:51.940and published and discussed and have an impact over time. No reason for cynicism or undo cynicism.
02:10:58.580Yeah, I agree. I agree. The world is open to, uh, new ideas and, and change. It just takes time, and it's a pity that we, uh, we don't have a few centuries to live.
02:11:18.580We have to sort of count on the next generation, uh, to continue the work, and from my perspective, we've had so many great students, uh, that are doing, um,
02:11:35.580exceptional work, uh, and, uh, the future, to me, looks very bright in terms of the advancement of, of the science of human behavior.
02:11:50.860We've come from a long way. Uh, there's a long tradition, uh, behind us, uh, but, uh, there's an exciting future.
02:12:01.300Um, I hope I'll continue to see part of it. And, and you've been, uh, Jordan, you've, uh, played, uh, an important role in, uh, in, in this, uh, path towards, uh, uh, convincing people that research is an important, uh,
02:12:25.300very important way of ameliorating the life of humans.
02:12:33.020So let's, let's close with one practical, um, issue. If you were going to recommend to a young person what they should study to prepare to be a research, a psychological researcher, a clinical psychological researcher of, of your type,
02:12:50.460what, what, what's, what, what should they do at the bachelor's level? Let's say what, what's the right preparation?
02:12:56.600And then let's walk through the process, bachelor, master's, PhD, postdoc, because people don't know that. And so what, what do you look for in a student at the,
02:13:06.860if you're looking for a master's level student, what should have they done in their bachelor's degree?
02:13:11.040Um, unfortunately, we are not, we are not working with, uh, students at the bachelor's, uh, at the bachelor level. Um,
02:13:26.380um, probably because, uh, I haven't been teaching for, uh, for the past, uh, 25 years. And so I'm not in contact with, uh,
02:13:39.180with, with bachelor level students, but from what I can, um, I can say from my own experience and interacting with some of the younger students, it's,
02:13:56.060it's, I guess they have to be passionate and at the same time, ready to work very hard, uh, to, um, clarify, uh,
02:14:09.180how you go about understanding, uh, what you want to, to understand. Uh, so you need, it's, it's almost.
02:14:21.280You need both of those. You need the interest and the discipline.
02:14:23.840I guess it's, it's like that in every discipline, even a hockey player or a football player.