Introduction
Anti-social personality disorders are prevalent and believed to be linked to serial killing among other mental problems. However, there are still various debates on anti-social personality disorder as a psychological condition that causes one not to have any regard for wrong. Individuals with this condition are characterized by some traits that involve violence and causing harm to other people. The diagnosis of this condition has not been discovered especially for individuals who are below the age of 18 years and 67% of these individuals also have mental disorders (Morana, Stone &Abdalla-Filho, 2006). The symptoms of this disorder vary at a given degree for every affected person, for those who display more dangerous and harmful patterns they are regarded as psychopathic. The complications of the disorder are drug abuse, alcoholism and to some extent imprisonment. The individuals also look charming at the beginning but they are quite irritable and extremely aggressive, and due to their manipulative habits, it becomes difficult to tell whenever they are lying and telling the truth.
Symptoms of anti-social personality disorders include disregard for the laws of the society, lack of stability in all aspects of life and lack of remorse. The individuals are also said to violate the physical and emotional rights of other people, recklessness, and deceitfulness. The psychologists have not yet discovered the real causes of the antisocial personality disorder although it could be an environmental or genetic factor. The genetic factor is prevalent because on checking the background of individuals with the disorder, there is a likelihood that majority of the family members are also affected. Majority of these people are in prisons because they engage in extreme crimes such as murder and serial killing. Some other features that they display are lack of empathy and being exploitative in their sexual relationships. Research also proves that anti-social personality behavior affects the male gender as compared to the female.
Serial killers have been found to have the anti-social personality disorders because they kill people without remorse out of being compelled to it (Aamodt, 2008). The individuals often hear voices and see visions and have a lot of difficulties to perceive reality and illusions. Another category of the serial killers are entirely sane, and they can differentiate right from wrong although they do not care because they are not empathetic. A serial killer’s activities are done in stages, and the characters are believed to be loners because they find it difficult to have relationships. Statistics show that serial killers are responsible for about 10% of murders a year. Moreover, they have a fascination with the law enforcement according to studies that have been previously conducted on prisoners in the attempt to know their feelings whenever they were committing a crime. Lack of remorse, impulsive and manipulative behavior are the three traits of Anti-Social Personal Disorder, which correlate to serial killing.
Lack of Remorse
Lack of remorse means that an individual fails to have a strong conscience; this means that after they commit murder, they do not feel guilty. According to a study conducted by Jones, Miller &Lynam (2011), a trial that was made on a serial killer known as Dr. Shipman murdered with no remorse for any of them. The serial killers also do not seem to have the ability to take responsibility for their actions because they greatly disregard the law and do what pleases them. Serial killers are different from personal killers because the personal killers only commit a single murder for a particular reason and they are later seen to be regretting their actions. Lack of remorse causes the anti-social personality disorders victims to feel justified in what they do because they are motivated to kill even without a concrete reason for the same and also disregarding the present laws. Studies show that most of the serial killers do not feel remorse even though they may have killed a large number of people without adequate reasons after which nothing really haunts them, and they do not learn from the mistake, instead, they are even more likely to commit the crime again. At this juncture, it is clear that those without remorse are more likely to commit serial killing compared to the rest of the population with remorse thus confirming one aspect of the claims on the causes of serial killing.
A sane individual tends to look back and see some of the things that they do are wrong which is completely different for the psychopaths. Some of the psychologists assert that the individuals kill many people for them to be famous and this is an indicator of absence remorse because whenever they lie about murder, they are not likely to feel the guilt of committing it. Such people want to be praised for taking the lives of others by making it known to others whether they actually commit the crime or they are lying about it. There is a famous serial killer known as Ted Bundy who had killed and raped more than twelve women and later decapitated them. The criminal suffered from the antisocial personality disorder because Ted never felt anguish for any actions as Ted felt bad for those who felt guilty (Myers et al., 2005). Many reasons could cause killers to be remorse, and the most common reason is insanity. Most killers who are found to have the condition are put in psychiatric wards instead of going to jail. The government does this to ensure that the mentally unstable are put together with the rest of the criminals in prison. The offenders are only put in jail once they are discovered to be mentally stable to serve their jail term. There is therefore a connection between lack of remorse and serial killing unless for cases where the victim is not in perfect mental state which is also not justifiable as to why serial killing should happen.
Some of the murders committed by Harold Shipman are still a mystery to the researchers because the serial killer did not demonstrate any signs of having ill motives such as sexual harassment and there was nothing that Harold gained from killing other people. The psychologists claim that the actions failed to fit the usual patterns of the serial killers who had the anti-social personality disorder (Ferguson, 2010). Most of the victims die with a lot of comfort and peace; moreover, others claim that the criminal enjoyed the sense of having total control over the lives of other people which led to addiction. No thought as pity or remorse towards the victims seem to occur to the serial killers because they feel like they have achieved what pleases them. Other killers who have been studied such as John Wayne Gacy had signs of being remorseful and being violent and verbally abusive (Gao &Raine, 2010). After the killer got an accident as a teenager, Wayne would experience blackouts and even failed to recognize some actions and thus depicted a life-long tendency of psychopathy. Therefore, it is evident that lack of remorse is a trait of antisocial personality disorder that most serial killers possess.
Impulsive behavior
Serial Killers also display impulsive behavior which involves taking actions that had ton been planned previously (Sansone&Sansone, 2012). The disorder causes them to defect from the knowing and reasoning faculties to make random and unplanned decisions to kill other people. Researchers assert that this goes hand in hand with insane illusions and hallucinations and several instances of blackouts as John Gacy. Anti-social personality disorder is quite impulsive and it tends to be erratic because they act more on whatever compels them to perform the act. Other killers always have their crimes planned to the smallest details to avoid being caught or any form of detection. The serial killers lack patience, and they give up more easily to impulse acts without any detailed planning. Poor Impulse control is one of the characteristics that prove that the serial killers suffer from the antisocial personality disorder.
The impulsive killers are not as intelligent as the murderers who plan for their crimes. According to psychologists, those who commit crimes out of passion have different minds from those who commit premeditated crimes. Findings from research show that 60% of the murders who were impulsive had some mental problems regarding their cognitive functions and intelligence. Thus, it is necessary for the lawmakers to identify these patterns that cause impulsiveness to ensure that there are increased rates of prevention (Cyders et al., 2014). Serial killers are characterized by psychopathy which is a personality disorder with manipulative and anti-social behavior. The individuals often fail to have self-control, and this could be as a result of poor socialization and lack of a social bond with the society. The impulsive behavior occurs because they are not able to take control of their actions. The killing is a breaking point in their individual lives, and sometimes it is difficult to establish what mainly triggers it.
The law enforcement has realized that seeking the motivation of a serial killer is a dead end when conducting investigations. The serial murderers are a committee to psychological gratification other than for material gains or revenge. The motivations are impulsive, and this could be for sexual satisfaction, thrill, and lust or for them to feel a sense of dominance over other people. This reveals the difficulty in using law enforcement to solve the problem of serial killing in many countries. Insights on the act reveal that there are patterns because they tend to use similar methods of killing and their victims are of a particular type. Investigations also show that it is rare to find female serial killers because women always know who their victims are and the reason for committing murder unlike their male counterparts who are more likely to commit serial killing. From the discussion, it is clear that serial killers portray impulsive behavior which is a symptom of antisocial personality disorder.
Manipulative Behavior
Antisocial personality disorder causes individuals to have little sensitivity about the feelings of other individuals. The serial killers are quite manipulative and selfish because they do not care for other individual but only themselves. The manipulative behavior is one of the characteristics of serial killers who suffer from an antisocial personality disorder is quite evident. The individuals have a charming look on the surface although deep within them they are irritable, aggressive and irresponsible which is why they are not easily predictable when in the midst of other people who are not serial killers until they strike. They use this behavior to lure their targets into their traps to harass or kill them and this makes them happy. A good example is Dennis Lynn Rader who lived in Kansas who was a serial killer although everything about the killer’s life described him as an entirely different person (Allely et al., 2014). The murderer lived in a small town was married, and also kept a low profile. In addition to this, people who lived in close to Rader only said good things about him because Rader had devised an appropriate way to cover the bad behavior. Serial killers pretend to be vulnerable to hide their real personality from other people even those that are close to them who find it difficult to believe that their family member can kill mercilessly. It so happens then that those with antisocial personality disorder remain calm until there is an opportunity to manipulate others.
Doctor Shipman, the serial killer, was known for excellent work in saving lives because the killer was a medical expert. The doctor used the medical expertise to recommend some treatments to the patients although with the knowledge that they would lead to their death. The power of manipulation enabled him to pass the blame to other juniors or the patients. The Killers reputation as a caring doctor would not give room for other people to doubt him or have the thought that the man would kill the patients. Studies also show that the serial killers are good at understanding other people’s emotions as a way of being able to know their weaknesses. The killers later use these weaknesses to come up with a means to kill them as they persuade them slowly Step by step and lead them to a trap. The murderers also create strong bonds with their targets to earn their trust and to ensure that they are convinced that they are good people (Fischer, Beckson& Dietz, 2017).
The manipulative characteristic enables them to divert suspicion from themselves and the view of the community. The community sees them as caring and quite sensitive because it attracts the vulnerable and potential victims. The criminals also do this to ensure that they have enough support from people who have evidence that they are people who are incapable of committing any form of crime. The killers also can draw their targets to vulnerable positions that they could not have been manipulated to in the ordinary circumstances (Potter, 2006). The author also demonstrates that out of 10 people who are serial killers 80% use the tactic of manipulating others in order to kill them. In addition to this, they also can manage other people to become accomplices of their crimes. Ted Bundy is a good example of a serial killer who manipulated women and earned their trust. Later, Ted would kidnap them and harass them sexually and then kill them out for pleasure.
In addition to being manipulative, the serial killers are random since they act like ordinary people and later become vicious killers. Thus, this proves that the serial killers have the characteristics that are difficult to predict and it is never known when they are likely to strike and the reasons behind it. The Criminal investigators assert that the personality disorder that the killers suffer from is caused by nurture and also some aspects of nature. For some killers, their impulse control centers of their brains may not have developed in the right way. However, this does not mean that the individuals are insane, they are unable to tell right from wrong, and they do not care about whatever they do (Vollm et al., 2010). Serial killers are compared to predatory animals and monsters because their aggressive behavior is as that of predators. The kind of personality perceives people as weak and inferior which is a source of their justification to hurt other people. The serial killers with the knowledge that people are weak and fearful like to show their power and uniqueness of fearlessness by manipulating them and killing them all together. In other words, it feels great of a serial killer to see others helpless and begging for leniency. Manipulative behavior is a characteristic of the antisocial personality disorder that enables the serial killers to avoid suspicion. Based on this discussion, manipulative behavior can be said to directly lead to serial killing together with lack of remorse and impulsive behavior. These factors can occur together or individually in cases of serial killing but this piece has explained each of them in a context of its own with regard to serial killing.
Conclusion
The antisocial personality disorder impedes the ability of individuals to care about the needs and feelings of other people. Based on the discussions in the study, serial killers are seen to be suffering from the psychological disorder because the symptoms are similar. The research paper has discussed manipulative behavior, impulsive behavior and lack of remorse that are the three traits of Anti-Social Personal Disorder, which correlate to serial killing. That is prevalent in the individuals. Examples of some of the well-known serial killers have also been provided. There are no tests that can proof that one is suffering from the antisocial personality disorder although one identifies it by observing the symptoms. Besides this, not all individuals who suffer from the condition end up becoming serial killers. On the contrary, the majority of the serial killers suffer from this problem since they exhibit most of the symptoms. More research is still being conducted on the treatment although there are those who seek help through therapies and they can get help. Also, some medications are designed for people with the disorder to minimize stress, anxiety and depression. From the discussion, there is limited research in the area of study which has also limited the treatment that is available and also teaching the individuals on how to manage their own feelings.