Serial Killers: Nature Vs. Nurture

What makes people do inexplicable, terrible, socially unacceptable acts of violence? This question brings to mind the age old psychological theory, Nature vs. Nurture. Are people born predisposed for violence? Is there something genetically different about serial killers and murderers? Can their behavior be explained by a difference in their very make-up? Or are they made violent by seeing violence, having un-supportive and demanding parents, being mentally, sexually, and physically abused? Nature vs. nurture is one of the most sought after answers in the field of psychology and may never be “answered” but can be “understood” I feel study in the minds of serial killers has helped to define exactly what nature vs. nurture really means. The
importance of somebody’s nature, their genetic make-up, has been studied time and time again. Studies on the minds of psychopaths have given us another unique perspective on how much impact one’s nature really has over their behaviors and actions.
Tests have shown that the nervous systems of psychopaths encounter less fear and anxiety than normal people. Tests have proven that low arousal levels have caused these individuals to project impulsive thrill-seeking behavior. Proven by one experiment, a group of healthy individuals and a group of serial killers were given the task of finding which lever out of four turned on a green light. One of the levers gave the subject an electric shock. Though both groups made the same number of mistakes the sociopaths took much longer in learning to stay away from the lever with the electric shock. This higher need for stimulation leads these individuals to seek dangerous situations. In fact most serial killers have a desire to become cops, the intensity of the job makes it exciting and desirable to them. The famous serial killer John Wyane Gacy, responsible for the rape and murder of 33 teenage boys and young men, told
psychologists he would follow the sound of an ambulance to see what kind of exciting catastrophe had happened. Thirty to thirty-eight percent of serial killers show abnormal brain wave patterns on an EEG. Children and infants have less brain activity than do adults but it increases with age. Most serial killers are under the age of fifty, and show no real improvement to this decreased brian wave activity. This abnormal brain activity has been reveled in the temporal lobes of the brain and the limbic system. These areas are responsible for memory and emotions. Another study focusing only on serial killers that had been adopted showed that the biological relatives of sociopaths were four to five times more likely to becomes sociopaths themselves. Genetics have shown that people can be born with a genetic predisposition for anti-social behavior, however nature is not without nurture and are indeed different than the healthy population of “normal” people. Environmental factors that have been shown in serial killers include: 60% of psychopathic individuals had lost a parent;
Child is deprived of love or nurturing; parents are detached or absent;
Inconsistent discipline: if father is stern and mother is soft, child learns to hate authority and manipulate mother;
Hypocritical parents who privately belittle the child while publicly presenting the image of a "happy family".
These statistics illustrate the idea that nature rarely operates without nurture. Dr. J. Reid Meloy, author of The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment, states “the psychopath is only capable of sadomasochistic relationships based on power, not attachment. Psychopaths identify with the aggressive role model, such as an abusive parent, and attack the weaker, more vulnerable self by projecting it onto others.” Dr. Meloy goes even further by saying that these environmental factors can hold sway over the predisposed, genetically different mind of the serial killer in infancy. An infant will start to look inward for after experiencing too many neglectful and painful experiences. In normal development a child bonds with the mother figure for nurturing and love, for a psychopath the mother is often seen as an “aggressive predator or a passive stranger.” This can be because she is overbearing and too protective, or because perhaps the father is abusive and she does nothing to intervene. Of course there are a plethora of reasons this could happen to the developing child, those are just a few examples. The father figure in a serial killers environment looms large too as
in Albert DeSalvo’s case. DeSalvo confessed to strangling eleven young women in Boston. His father would often bring home prostitutes and torture his mother by breaking her fingers one by one while young DeSalvo watched. This type of an environment is not healthy for anyone, let alone someone sharing genes with someone capable of this kind of torture. The conclusion of all this, Nature and Nurture work hand in hand. I believe a person is generally born with a predisposition to violence and anti-social behavior. These people are fully capable of not taking action with their thoughts and feelings of rage and violence but when social and environmental factors are brought into the mix the result is more often than not terrible. It is hard for a healthy individual to understand that someone could be capable of such atrocious acts, but the healthy individual has more than likely not been exposed to the environment the psychopath is. I think it is important to not discount entirely the facts that serial killers and murderers are genetically different than the average human. Some animals are more prone to be domineering and violent and I think it would be hard to prove that the dog’s mother didn’t love him enough. Based on that it is my opinion that human nature, our behaviors and ideas, our social roles ect. are in part predetermined by our genes. When the subject is exposed to awful scenarios it only sets the stage for the creating of a serial killer monster such as Jeffery Dahmer.

Bibliography

Evaluating a psychological profile of a serial killer

The Mind of a Serial Killer

What Makes Serial Killers Tick? — Monsters or Victims? — Crime ...