I agree that early detection in children is an interesting idea. If certain childhood behaviours can be shown to reliably predict malevolence, then this could be part of a manipulation-proof test. However, as you say, there are many pitfalls to be avoided.
I am not well versed in the literature but my impression is that things like torturing animals, bullying, general violence, or callous-unemotional personality traits (as assessed by others) are somewhat predictive of malevolence. But the problem is that you’ll probably also get many false positives from those indicators.
Regarding environmental or developmental interventions, we write this in Appendix B:
Malevolent personality traits are plausibly exacerbated by adverse (childhood) environments—e.g. ones rife with abuse, bullying, violence or poverty (cf. Walsh & Wu, 2008). Thus, research to identify interventions to improve such environmental factors could be valuable. (However, the relevant areas appear to be very crowded. Also, the shared environment appears to have a rather small effect on personality, including personality disorders (Knopik et al., 2018, ch. 16; Johnson et al., 2008; Plomin, 2019; Torgersen, 2009).)
Perhaps improving parenting standards and childhood environments could actually be a fairly promising EA cause. For instance, early advocacy against hitting children may have been a pretty effective lever to make society more civilised and less violent in general.
Thanks for commenting!
I agree that early detection in children is an interesting idea. If certain childhood behaviours can be shown to reliably predict malevolence, then this could be part of a manipulation-proof test. However, as you say, there are many pitfalls to be avoided.
I am not well versed in the literature but my impression is that things like torturing animals, bullying, general violence, or callous-unemotional personality traits (as assessed by others) are somewhat predictive of malevolence. But the problem is that you’ll probably also get many false positives from those indicators.
Regarding environmental or developmental interventions, we write this in Appendix B:
Perhaps improving parenting standards and childhood environments could actually be a fairly promising EA cause. For instance, early advocacy against hitting children may have been a pretty effective lever to make society more civilised and less violent in general.