Nature & Nurture #19: Dr. Richard Tremblay - The Development of Aggression

The Nature & Nurture Podcast

Dr. Richard Tremblay is an Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Psychology at the University of Montreal and one of the world's leading experts on childhood aggression. In 2017 he received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his work on studying the developmental origins of aggression in children and his intervention studies meant to improve the developmental trajectories of delinquent children.

In this episode we discuss Dr. Tremblay's background in psychology and his large-scale longitudinal studies of the development of aggression in children which showed that aggression is most frequent in toddlers, and declines with age. We additionally discuss his use of twin studies to examine what proportion of aggression is due to genetic vs. environmental factors, sex differences in aggression, environmental risk factors for criminality, and interventions which can be made to improve developmental trajectories in high-risk children.