The Welfare Trait

2015 book by Adam Perkins

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The Welfare Trait

First edition (publ. Palgrave Macmillan)

Author| Adam Perkins

Publication date

| 2015
ISBN| 9781137555281

The Welfare Trait: How State Benefits Affect Personality is a 2015 book by Adam Perkins, Lecturer in the Neurobiology of Personality at King's College London.[1]

Perkins claims that individuals with aggressive, rule-breaking and anti-social tendencies are over-represented among long-term welfare recipients. He calls this an "employment–resistant personality profile" and finds that it is heritable.[2]

The book was controversial.[3] It initially attracted little attention, with the journal Nature refusing to review it.[2] In 2016, a talk by Perkins was cancelled for fear of disruption.[4] Perkins later wrote "I was no-platformed by student 'radicals' for telling the truth about welfare".[5] That year, Perkins secretly gave a presentation on the book at the London Conference on Intelligence.[6]

The Adam Smith Institute commended the book's "praiseworthy boldness".[7] However the argument was criticised in The Guardian for cherry-picking the data, relying too heavily on mice studies, and resembling eugenics.[8] A professor at University College London reviewed the book negatively, claiming Perkins failed to prove causal links for his assertions, and that "his proposals are more likely to harm, then help, children."[8]

A 2017 review in the British Journal of Psychiatry wrote "it is true that there is good-quality evidence for the transmission of dysfunctional personality traits by epigenetic means across generations".[9]

In 2018, a correction to one of Perkins' papers underlying the book identified seven errors.[10]

## References

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1. ^ "Adam Perkins - Research Portal, King's College, London".
2. ^ a b Young, Toby. "Tell the truth about benefit claimants and the left shuts you down". The Spectator. The Spectator. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
3. ^ "Worklessness is not a trait: Why blaming and shaming is not a solution". British Politics and Policy at Lse. 12 April 2016.
4. ^ "LSE talk on welfare postponed over fears of disruption". 18 February 2016.
5. ^ "I was no-platformed by student 'radicals' for telling the truth about welfare". 24 February 2016.
6. ^ Merwe, Ben van der (9 June 2021). "It might be a pseudo science, but students take the threat of eugenics seriously". New Statesman. Retrieved 4 September 2022.
7. ^ "A Review of Adam Perkins's 'The Welfare Trait' «". www.adamsmith.org. Archived from the original on 16 January 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
8. ^ a b "Adam Perkins: 'Welfare dependency can be bred out' | Dawn Foster". TheGuardian.com. 9 March 2016.
9. ^ Adshead, Gwen (2017). "The Welfare Trait: How State Benefits Affect Personality by Adam Perkins. Palgrave Macmillan. 2016. £20.00 (Pb). 201 pp. ISBN 9781137555281". British Journal of Psychiatry. 210 (4): 303. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.116.187757. S2CID 34824320.
10. ^ "How the "welfare trap" research championed by Toby Young crumbled under scrutiny". 9 June 2021.

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