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Risk Taking

Risk Taking, Impulsiveness, and the Age-Crime Relationship

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The study's purpose was to determine to determine the influence of risk-taking and impulsiveness on criminal behavior, the factors' relationship to each other and their relationship, to age. It was hoped that the data would help explain the phenomenon of criminal burnout. Subjects were three groups of males aged 18 to 44, classed by their criminal history. Group One was 83 prisoners; group two, 53 subjects who had never been arrested; group three, 28 who had been arrested or incarcerated in the past, but who were not incarcerated at this time (the "erstwhilegroup). Measures utilized were the Self-control (Sc) scale from the California Psychological Inventory, Risk-taking (Rtg) and Infrequency (Inf) scales from the Jackson Personality Inventory, a modified Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire, the Impulsiveness (Imp) and Venturesomeness (Ven) scales from the Eysenck, Pearson, Easting, and Allsopp (1985) 1-7, and two behavioral measures: volunteering and cigarette smoking.

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Variations In Risk Taking Behavior Over The Menstrual Cycle An Improved Replication

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Abstract

Evidence that women are less likely to be raped near ovulation than at other times in the ovarian cycle may reflect behavioral adaptations against the risk of fertile insemination by rapists. Chavanne and Gallup [Evol. Hum. Behav. 19 (1998) 27] proposed that women selectively reduce behaviors that expose them to a risk of rape during the ovulatory phase of their menstrual cycle, and reported supportive evidence. However, their study suffered from certain methodological shortcomings. In an improved test involving 51 subjects, repeated measurement, and an explicit distinction between risky and nonrisky activities, we confirmed all predictions: During the ovulatory phase, naturally cycling women reduced risky behaviors and increased nonrisky ones. Women using contraceptives causing hormonal suppression of ovulation showed neither effect.

1. Introduction

Forced copulation is taxonomically widespread, and in many cases it clearly represents an evolved reproductive tactic (Cox & Le Boeuf, 1977; Gowaty & Buschhaus, 1998; Smuts & Smuts, 1993; Thornhill, 1980; Thornhill & Thornhill, 1987).

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