The Welfare Trait: How State Benefits Affect Personality

212 Pages·2016·1.03 MB·English

by  Adam Perkins (auth.)

The Welfare Trait
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The Welfare Trait
How State Benefits Affect Personality
Adam Perkins
Lecturer in the Neurobiology of Personality, King’s College London, UK
© Adam Perkins 2016
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted hi s r hi gt to bei dentified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2016 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-137-55528-1 ISBN 978-1-137-55529-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-55529-8
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
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processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record fo r hti sbo ok i s a vlabi le fr o mhte B r i thiLsbi r a r y .
Libr a r yf oC o n g r e s s lCoag ti an g - i nb-li Pc au t i o n aD a t
Perkins, Adam, 1972– author.
The welfare trait : how state benefits affect personality / Adam Perkins.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Personality and occupation. 2. Public welfare—Psychological
aspects. 3. Welfare recipients—Psycology. 4. Welfare recipients—
Attitudes. 5. Personality change. I. Title.
BF698.9.O3P46 2015
′
155.9 2—dc23 2015020341
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements viii
Preface x
1 What Is Personality and Why Does the Welfare State
Matter? 1
2 The Employment-Resistant Personality Profile 18
3 The Lifelong Impact of Personality 40
4 The Influence of Benefits on Claimant Reproduction 54
5 Childhood Disadvantage and Employment-Resistance 79
6 Genetic Influences on Personality 97
7 Personality as a Product of Nature and Nurture 112
8 A Model of How the Welfare State Leads to Personality
Mis-Development 122
9 Further Evidence for Welfare-Induced Personality
Mis-Development 140
10 What Next? 175
References 186
Index 197
v
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 The personality-filtering process triggered by the
implementation of the welfare state 32
2.2 Employability as a function of the combined scores
on conscientiousness and agreeableness in 2,532 UK
adults 38
4.1 Distribution of antisocial personality traits in a
sample of 514 US residents 61
4.2 Distribution of antisocial personality traits in a
sample of 638 UK residents 62
4.3 Childhood self-control and reproduction in a British
cohort born in 1958 66
4.4 Childhood self-control and reproduction in a British
cohort born in 1970 67
5.1 The rate of return of childhood versus adult
interventions 81
5.2 Children’s quarrelling with parents by satisfaction
with life overall, 2011–2012 84
5.3 Children’s talk with parents by satisfaction with life
overall, 2011–2012 85
8.1 Percentage of Perry Preschool participants who were
unemployed at the age of 40 versus the average rate
of unemployment for African Americans in 2004 125
8.2 Percentage of Perry Preschool participants who had
served a prison sentence by the age of 40 versus the
average rate of incarceration for African Americans in
2001 126
8.3 The distribution of questionnaire scores on
conscientiousness in 2,532 participants from one of
my own studies (dashed lines indicate one standard
deviation) 132
vi
List of Illustrations vii
9.1 Bar chart showing the average number of children
under the age of 16 in working, mixed and workless
households, April–June 2013, UK 158
9.2 Bar chart showing the average number of children
under the age of 16 in working, mixed, workless and
troubled households, April–June 2013, UK 159
9.3 Targeted annual expenditure on troubled families 161
9.4 Reactive annual expenditure on troubled families 162
9.5 Homicides in England and Wales between 1901 and
2011 168
9.6 The relationship in the USA from 2000 to 2009
between per-capita consumption of cheese and
deaths due to tangled bed sheets 169
10.1 Bar chart showing the average number of children
under the age of 16 in working, mixed and workless
households, April–June 2013, UK 176
Tables
4.1 Average number of children under the age of 16 in
working, mixed and workless households in England
and Wales during April–June 2013 72
9.1 Employment status of individuals convicted of
homicide in England and Wales from 2007/2008 to
2012 165
Acknowledgements
Modern science is a matter of teamwork and this book reflects the
influence of many people. First, I thank my parents Robert and
Kathleen for endowing me – through the interaction of nature and
nurture – with a thirst for knowledge, which is perhaps the most
important asset of all for a scientist. They also gave me a belief that
the status quo should be questioned as well as the benefit of a sta-
ble, supportive and loving childhood home, but without being a soft
touch: my employment-resistant personality profile became apparent
at an early age and my parents did their best to stamp it out. My sister
Katie assisted with that process by setting an example of highly con-
scientious and agreeable behaviour, but I remain easily distracted and
therefore must also thank my aunt and uncle, Barbara and Guy, who
helped to save my sanity and this book by providing me with a quiet
and internet-free place to write certain particularly difficult sections
of the manuscript. The literary world is a complex and strange one
to a scientific researcher and I was therefore lucky to benefit from
the advice of Mike and Marian Shaw as well as their kind hospitality
many years ago when I was a callow and near penniless warehouse
worker, newly arrived in London. The bosses of that warehouse were
decent enough to employ me for almost three years and at the same
time taught me a lot about the world of work: thank you Paul and
Anto. Once I entered the world of scientific publishing I was very
lucky to benefit from the advice of the established scientific author
Professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who provided many wise sug-
gestions as to how to proceed. I thank the diligent and gifted staff at
Palgrave Macmillan who helped to make TheWelfare Trait into a book
rather than just a series of chapters. In particular, I thank Paul Stevens
for spotting the potential of The Welfare Trait as a Palgrave Macmillan
book and Nicola Jones for taking time out of her Christmas holiday to
read the entire manuscript, a sacrifice that (I hope) was worthwhile,
as she provided astute editorial analysis that did a lot to improve
the book. Eleanor Christie successfully saw the book through the
labyrinth of anonymous peer review – I am most grateful to her for
viii
Acknowledgements ix
undertaking this arduous task, as well as to the three anonymous
reviewers whose criticisms were sometimes harsh, sometimes gentle
but always useful. As a result of all these efforts, I think this book
represents a true meeting of minds between author and publisher
and is much the better for it. Before the manuscript was known to
the publisher, it had already gone through four drafts – drafts that
were scrutinised by a doughty group of test readers, namely Alex
Douglas, Simon Brunton, Rosalind Arden, Atalanta Arden-Miller and
Jonathan O’Muircheartaigh. I also thank all those with whom I have
had inspiring discussions over the five and a half years it took to
write this book, especially Rob Davis, Andy Davis, Emma Wright,
Sophie Inchley-Mort, Tim Bates and David Gasston. Last but not
least, I salute Professors Philip Corr and James Heckman who have
provided me with much of my scientific inspiration.