If you are manipulative, irresponsible, a pathological liar, and have a lack of sympathy and remorse, please go to your nearest mental health office and ask for an evaluation by a psychiatrist, because, according to Hare (1970), there is a high chance that you may be a psychopath. In Samuel Jackson’s Hollywood blockbuster, The Hit man’s bodyguard, a Belarusian tyrant is brought before the International Criminal Court for atrocities against humanity. He is accused to have conducted an expedition on a particular village and killed a lot of people. This kind of behavior, even if not with the same extreme consequence, is as old as the existence of man. There are always people who will always show anti-social behaviors or interpersonal attributes that might affect the people around them, for instance, excessive aggressiveness. This behavior is known as psychopathy. Several studies around these behavioral complexities have been conducted to get a clear understanding of what influences the development of psychopathological behaviors. This paper will concentrate much on the environmental aspect as well as the genetic aspect of the mental disorder (A Possible Environmental Pattern to Develop Psychopathy, 2018).
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by many abnormal behavioral signs and emotional reactions. These include the absence of sympathy, guilt or repentance, as well as manipulation and deception. People with psychopathy are often irresponsible and do not pay attention to laws or social conventions. Psychopathy is among the most difficult disorders. A psychopath can seem normal, even charming. Sometimes a psychopath lacks a sense of conscience and empathy, unstable and often (but not always) a criminal (Kiehl, K. A., & Hoffman, M. B, 2014).
Genetic composition of a person plays a huge part in helping the shape of a person’s behaviors. However, the genes are not fully responsible for the shaping of these traits because they interact with environmental factors to contribute to the development of these traits. Therefore, in understanding the causes of psychopathy one must consider both the genetic aspect of the development of this disorder as well as the environmental causes of the development of psychopathy (A Possible Environmental Pattern to Develop Psychopathy, 2018).
Researchers have established, through a number of studies, the heritability of psychopathy. Most of the heritability studies that have been conducted have used sets of twins, both identical and fraternal twins because they share a hundred percent genes and fifty percent genes respectively. The results from these studies show that close to fifty percent of individual differences as seen in psychopathic traits were genetically heritable. The results elicit that, just like the difference in other personality characters and disorders point to genetic factors, the psychopathic disorder is similar to other disorders in etiology but the genetic composition does not account for a hundred percent of the individual differences in psychopathic traits. However, there is no specific gene that has been identified to be the one responsible for psychopathic traits. Instead, most studies have suggested that there could be a combination of genes that are at play to bring about psychopathic traits (A Possible Environmental Pattern to Develop Psychopathy, 2018).
Recent studies on the genetic aspect of psychopathy have concentrated more on the causes of psychopathy rather than the phenotypic demonstration of the mental disorder. The cause-oriented approach has established that causes of interpersonal affective traits like excessive aggression and antisocial behaviors may derive from separate processes, substantially of genetic nature. This finding suggests that psychopathic behavior in some individuals may consist of a combination of independent personality to form a particular phenotype as would suggest some theorists of personality.
The environmental causes of psychopathic disorders revolves majorly around the kind of social circles that one maintains; the kind of interactions that a person makes, their experiences in life and overall the upbringing of an individual. The studies around the environmental causes of psychopathy are quite sparse and the studies are a bit limited. The available researches have also used sets of twins to make their observations around the mental disorder. Different sets of twins were observed. Factors that proved most important in observing the development of psychopathy were the shared and non-shared environmental factors (“Is Psychopathy Genetic?”, 2018).
Considering the shared factors that are responsible for the development of psychopathy, the research established that things like family, which are shared factors, were responsible to shape a person’s behavior. Children were most likely to borrow from family most of their traits. If the parents are introverted and antisocial, they are likely to follow the introverted nature of their parent (“Is Psychopathy Genetic?”, 2018). Considering the non-shared factors for the development of psychopathy, the research established that other factors are also at play when it came to shaping the psychopathic development. Factors like socialization are very key players in the development of mental conditions. While people might be born twins, the truth is that the people they will interact with are likely to be different. Therefore, the friends that the twins will acquire are of diverse background. The behavior of each child from the set of twin is likely to be of different since they pick the behaviors from people from their circles. In the end, they all have different priorities (“Is Psychopathy Genetic?”, 2018).
Consider this classical illustration of the psychopathy mental disorder. Meet Eric from Milwaukee. Growing up Eric was demonstrating an excessive aggressiveness and lack of empathy; for instance, once when he was nine, he chased his older sister with a large kitchen knife. Moreover, he grew up in a very unstable home; in fact, his mother was arrested for dealing cocaine and prostitution, and his father who was abusing drugs and alcohol was arrested for domestic violence. This environment did add to his nature. When he turned eleven, he started doing drugs and drinking alcohol just like his father. At the age of twelve, Eric already had 20 one-night stands with multiple young girls. He would manipulate them and steal their money afterward. No surprise that by age fourteen he ended up in a correctional facility for many offenses (Kiehl, 2014).
The world is composed of various characters and different interactions spring out of the people who live in the world. These interactions are the ones that experience very many extreme consequences which are either as a result of what the people have gone through or just due to nature. The studies around the contribution of environmental and genetic factors to the development of psychopathy have been conducted and the pieces of evidence have been clear as they have been conclusive. However, there is an overwhelming need for further studies around the genetic aspects of the development of this kind of mental disorder so that the specific genes can be identified