Serial Killer Essay
Serial Killers
Serial killer: A person who attacks and kills victims one by one in a series of incidents.
Why do some people kill other people? More importantly, why do some people enjoy killing lots of people just for the fun of it? This is a basic description of what a serial killer is. But what possesses these human beings to commit such heinous crimes? Some say that genetics are responsible, while others blame the environment that the killers grew up in. The causes of psychopathy remain a mystery. We don’t even have a reasonable answer to the question of whether psychopathy is a product of Mother Nature or a part of upbringing.
One of the best sources of information about whether traits are a result or nature of nurture comes from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, a project originally led by Minnesota Professor of Psychology Thomas Joseph Bouchard, Jr. This study has shown that psychopathy is 60 percent heritable, which indicates that psychopathic traits are due more to DNA than to upbringing. Recent genetic studies of twins imply that identical twins may not be as genetically similar as previously assumed. Though only a couple hundred mutations take place throughout early fetal development, the mutations are likely to multiply over the years, leading to infinite genetic differences. This leaves open the possibility that psychopathic traits are largely genetically determined.
Another factor pointing towards the idea that psychopathy is genetically determined was identified by in a study at University of Wisconsin, Madison. When dealing with the terrible notion that some people take pride in murdering others, one should expect some abnormality in the brain, the immediate source of psychopathic traits. Scans of the brain revealed that psychopathy in criminals was associated with reduced connectivity between the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes negative stimuli, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a region in the front
Serial killer: A person who attacks and kills victims one by one in a series of incidents.
Why do some people kill other people? More importantly, why do some people enjoy killing lots of people just for the fun of it? This is a basic description of what a serial killer is. But what possesses these human beings to commit such heinous crimes? Some say that genetics are responsible, while others blame the environment that the killers grew up in. The causes of psychopathy remain a mystery. We don’t even have a reasonable answer to the question of whether psychopathy is a product of Mother Nature or a part of upbringing.
One of the best sources of information about whether traits are a result or nature of nurture comes from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, a project originally led by Minnesota Professor of Psychology Thomas Joseph Bouchard, Jr. This study has shown that psychopathy is 60 percent heritable, which indicates that psychopathic traits are due more to DNA than to upbringing. Recent genetic studies of twins imply that identical twins may not be as genetically similar as previously assumed. Though only a couple hundred mutations take place throughout early fetal development, the mutations are likely to multiply over the years, leading to infinite genetic differences. This leaves open the possibility that psychopathic traits are largely genetically determined.
Another factor pointing towards the idea that psychopathy is genetically determined was identified by in a study at University of Wisconsin, Madison. When dealing with the terrible notion that some people take pride in murdering others, one should expect some abnormality in the brain, the immediate source of psychopathic traits. Scans of the brain revealed that psychopathy in criminals was associated with reduced connectivity between the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes negative stimuli, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a region in the front