The Welfare Trait

2015 book by Adam Perkins

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First edition (publ. Palgrave Macmillan)

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.[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. ^ "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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