Neurobiopsychosocial Perspectives on Aggression and Violence (eBook)

This book bridges the gap between basic science, which deals with general concepts of aggression and its neurobiological foundations, and law enforcement as one of the applied fields of aggression research. It addresses the current state of research and practice and compares and integrates the concept of aggression with violent crime. Chapters examine the types of criminal careers that cross the boundary between the two and summarize the biological, psychological, and social factors that underlie particular types of criminal careers. Subsequent chapters discuss overlaps between biological and psychological factors and detail how and to what extent aggression may serve as explanatory mechanisms for violence. The book also discusses the relationship between social problems and neuropsychological deficits, addressing how the neuropsychological deficits lead to the intergenerational recycling of social problems. Finally, the volume explores violence and aggression from a neurobiological perspective.

Topics featured in this book include:

• The heritability of aggressiveness and violence-proneness.
• Glucocorticoids in humans.
• Aggression circuitry in animals.
• Distorted circuitry in violent animals.
• Biological factors of psychological change.

Neurobiopsychosocial Perspectives on Aggression and Violence is a must-have resource for researchers, clinicians and other professionals, and graduate students in forensic psychology, criminology/criminal justice, public health, developmental psychology, psychotherapy/counseling, psychiatry, social work, educational policy and politics, health psychology, nursing, and behavioral therapy/rehabilitation.

József Haller, Ph.D., DSc, studied the neurobiology of aggression for most of his scientific career. He published more than 150 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and authored three books on the subject. His last book was Neurobiological Bases of Aggression and Violent Behavior (Springer, 2014). As a leader of the Behavioral Neurobiology Department of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Budapest, Hungary, he contributed to aggression research by initiating the concept of abnormal aggression in animals, developing two laboratory models of aggression-related psychopathologies, and differentiating the neurobiological bases of normal manifestations of aggression from those of its abnormal forms and violence. His scientific work is widely known and cited in the field. He was recently appointed the head of the Institute of Behavioral Sciences and Law Enforcement, University of Public Service, Budapest, Hungary, where he teaches criminal psychology and conducts research in this field.