Page 35 - Issue 26
P. 35
Vol.1 Issue 26, December 2020 ELITE
Are psychopaths made or born?
forat hatem
You might’ve seen a lot of movies where the abandonment. traumatic events also increase
main plot was psychopathy, and throughout the chances of psychopathic traits being more
watching those movies, and watching the pronounced. Thus, making one’s environment
gruesome psychological and physical acts and childhood key factors in triggering
committed by the antagonist, you must’ve someone’s psychopathy. But, genetics and
wondered, where did it go wrong in someone’s brain anatomy are indispensable when it
life for them to turn into a psychopath? Or is comes to someone having an antisocial mental
there a factor in their genes that helped them disorder. A study on a large group of children
click and lose it all? Well, I’m here to answer your found more than 60% heritability for "callous-
speculations. unemotional traits" and that conduct problems
First of all, Dr. Henry R. Hermann defined among children with these traits had a higher
psychopathy in his book “Dominance and heritability than among children without these
aggression in humans and other animals” as a traits. fearless dominance and impulsive
mental (antisocial) disorder in which an antisociality were similarly influenced by
individual manifests amoral and antisocial genetic factors and uncorrelated with each
behavior, shows a lack of ability to love or other.
establish meaningful personal relationships,
expresses extreme egocentricity, and On the other hand, researchers have linked
demonstrates a failure to learn from experience head injuries with psychopathy and violence.
and other behaviors associated with the Since the 1980s, scientists have associated
condition. Which also means that people traumatic brain injury, such as damage to the
diagnosed with this antisocial disorder look and prefrontal cortex, including the orbitofrontal
act like normal people, and maybe even act more cortex, with psychopathic behavior and a
charming than the average human, but deep deficient ability to make morally and socially
inside they lack any semblance of conscience. acceptable decisions, a condition that has been
termed "acquired sociopathy", or
To find answers to those previously asked "pseudopsychopathy".
questions, we need to understand that there are
multiple factors that contribute in the creation Thus the answer to that burning question is
and development of psychopathic traits, such as that psychopaths are both made and born;
one's environment, upbringing, genetics, and genetic factors may generally influence the
brain anatomy. Researchers discovered that development of psychopathy while
disrupted parental bonding is associated with environmental factors affect the specific
higher levels of adult psychopathy, also expression of the traits that predominate.
childhood abuse, but contrary to popular beliefs,
physical abuse doesn’t affect psychopathy as
much as mental abuse and
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