ABSTRACT
An important point made in Chapter 3 is that the influence of rewards and costs depends upon person factors. One set of person factors are cognitive and personality based. Another set is biological factors. In general, biological factors have received little attention within criminology (Wright & Cullen, 2012), but they have been very important in psychology. This chapter examines how what we are born with interacts with the environment to shape behavior. Interactions also explain why some person factors are risk/need factors and others may be strength factors. For example, opportunistic rewards for criminal behavior may be more appealing to the individual with low self-control (risk/need factor) whereas high self-control serves as a strength or protective factor against the very same opportunistic rewards for crime. Biological factors lie at the base of criminal behavior. It is the foundation not only for personality development but also cognitive development.
