Introduction:
The nature vs. nurture debate has interested scientists throughout history. The debate goes back as far as the Greek classical period in which Plato favoured nature, whilst Aristotle sided with nurture. The argument developed among ancient psychologists because of their interest in how individuals obtained their knowledge. In 1869 however, English Polymath, Francis Galton, wanted to investigate how much our personality and character was influenced by nature or nurture. Galton publicised two books, ‘Hereditary Genius’ (1869) and ‘English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture’ (1874). Both of his works tended to favour nature over nurture as he believed intelligence was largely inherited. The nature vs nurture debate stems from this belief that the DNA and genotypes we are born with determine who we are and what personality traits we will have. Whilst other people believe that we become who we are through learning and experiences we have throughout our lives. However, there are some people who believe in both sides of the argument, saying that a combination of our DNA and our surroundings make us who we are. 1
No one is born evil but some people are more prone to becoming evil than others. Our childhoods play a key part in making us who we are as a person. Parents and teachers have a massive influence on how our personality develops when we are older. Growing up in a cold environment with no praise is likely to make a child less empathetic. Where as a rewarding teacher can help a child learn how to react appropriately to other peoples suffering. Growing up in a cold, abusive environment with no praise for good behaviour could, in extreme cases, lead a child develop murderous traits. By the age of five it is usually apparent as to whether or not you are going to do something dreadful. This is because nobody just wakes up and decides they want to kill someone. The frustrations in their personality will grow and fester throughout their lives.2 (maybe move this to the conclusion)
Everybody is capable of being Evil:
To categorise people into good and bad would be incorrect. Everybody is capable of committing terrible acts. In Nazi Germany, for example, people were encouraged to murder other people on mass and rewarded for such horrific acts. These people would have been told that what they are doing is right. Even people who have charming childhoods had the capacity to do evil things, so being taught right and wrong at a young age and having a happy child cannot prevent terrible events happening. Therefore, not everything is down to nurture. Brian Masters, who has written biographies for many mass murderers, said, “Whereas I am an equitable soul and would never raise my fist in anger or try to do something that is harmful to another person. I have to admit in total sanity and intellectual honesty that I could. I’m so grateful to live in a country where that is unlikely.2
The marines training programme is an example of how everyone has the ability to kill. They did this by suppressing their moral instinct, however, it resulted in many implications beyond the camp. As soon as you apply to be a marine, you know that from day one you have on main purpose, to take another person’s life. In order to make this possible the marines are trained to go against their moral instinct. It is not human nature to take another person’s life neither is it easy to kill another person, because it is so unnatural the marines learn step by step. At the beginning they are taught basic self defence such as standing, falling, punching and kicking. As they progress weapons are added, firstly knifes, then other weapons such as batons and pistols. The marines are taught how to use these to their advantage, knowing how to hold them and use them with their weaker hands. They keep repeating these processes over and over again until it becomes second nature to them, one marine stated, “it becomes muscle memory, the body naturally relaxed”. Scientists say that if you practice something over and over again for twenty-one days then it becomes a habit. This repetition pushes the men over the natural barrier that holds them back from harming others. It gives them the ability to just “turn the switch on when the have to” “they don’t think twice about it”. To equip a person with the ability to kill they must combine it with motivation. This used to be hate. Marines were trained as killers because this was the easy way out. This had its repercussions, because the men were starting to lose their natural sense of morality they were slowly being destroyed mentally, many marines started to abuse their families and wives and ended up losing their respect for all life including their friends and family, this is because the training was removing their morality which is fundamental to our human brains. Humans are not natural killers. Studies also showed that it was easy to get the men to kill on the spot but when they returned back to camp and had a chance to reflect on what they had done they did not take it so well; this was psychologically unhealthy for the marines. After extensive research the marines came up with a new training programme. They worked out that people are natural protectors, in working with this human trait they were working with their natural moral instinct not against it. They found out that people would protect and defend another person or themselves if there was a life at risk. This turned the marines into “moral warriors” but only when it was necessary to protect life. This shows that all people are capable of murder but not everyone is able to cope with the mental repercussions and guilt of taking another person’s life.3
Psychopathy:
The oxford dictionary describes a psychopath as “a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior”.4
From an early age psychopaths differ a lot from other children. They have different temperaments meaning that they more likely to commit crimes at a young age. Only a few children with antisocial tendencies are born this way. Children diagnoses as psychopaths are often fearless and have a weak behavioural inhibition system. Many scientists believe that most antisocial behaviours occurring in children are due to poor parenting. This could come under many categories such as absent fathers or inadequate mothers that do not give their children the chance so socialise. In some cases, parents find the child frustrating or in rare circumstances their parenting skills are subnormal. This causes many children to act out, we call these children sociopaths. Many scientists believe that with better social skills we can decrease the number of children suffering from this predisposition. Although most believe that this difference in children occurs due to inadequate parenting many scientists support the view that criminality has a substantial heritability factor, many personality traits such as fearlessness, aggressiveness and sensation seeking, which often lead to delinquency in children, can often be channelled into more positive things, however it is down to the child’s parents to raise them in a way that allows this to happen.5
The case study of Gary Gilmore, is an example of a man who suffered an abusive childhood resulting in sociopathic tendencies. Gilmore murdered two young men without a cause and then refused to appeal his own death sentence. Gary’s younger brother, Mikal Gilmore was intrigued as to why Gary was the only one of four brothers to be outwardly violent. Mikal started with the fact that other than him and his brother all other members of their family were dead of had left them. Out of the five children, one died as an infant and another died due to complications after being violently stabbed. The only other living brother neglected the family and left. This shows that from an early age Gary grew up in a dysfunctional family, furthermore their Father, Frank Gilmore, was known as a conman, a gypsy, an alcoholic and a brutal autocrat. Most importantly he was an abusive husband and father. Frank often disappeared without letting the rest of the family know, sometimes he took Bessie, Mikal and Gary’s, Mother with him leaving the children behind. As soon as Gary was born Frank decided that Gary was not his son, but the child of Franks own son from a previous marriage whom Bessie was friends with. It is believed that Frank did this as a way to detach from his son the way his own father did to him. As Gary got older his dad began to whip both him and his brother with a belt, far harder than they deserved for whatever they had done wrong. The boys continued to love their father even as their father’s violence grew to the point where there was nothing neither Gary or his brother could do right. Their mother did nothing to protect them but instead lectured the children on how the best families were childless, making the children feel worthless and unloved. The boys mother soon began to beat her own children the way her husband beat her. Gary reacted to this with a rebellious streak, he never took up the opportunities that came his way to help move him in a more positive direction. Instead he acted out in class and was known to hang around an antisocial gang of boys, he was even known to test his courage by running in front of moving trains. By the age of sixteen Gary was in jail. Even after prison he acted out, almost as soon as he was let out he committed another crime which resulted in him being sent back to prison. A psychiatrist who treated Gary whilst he was in prison diagnosed him with an “antisocial personality with intermittent psychotic decomposition” another doctor stated that Gary had revealed that he wanted to die, specifically to bleed to death. In July 1976, Gary was let out of prison on parole, almost immediately he killed two men with no meaning or cause. Gary was then sentenced to the death penalty to which he did not try to appeal. He just wanted it to end.5
Psychologist Lonnie Athens believes that there is an evolutionary process to antisocial behaviour. When children are born they are born harmless and compassionate, therefore violence is preventable and less likely to occur. The stages to violence include: brutalization and subjugation, belligerency, violent coaching and criminal activity. At the beginning a person is the victim of violence, they are unable to escape it, it is always there. From this they learn when they should be violent and how to be violent. They are so used to these traits that they believe that what is going on is normal and how they should behave themselves. Lastly, they act on this violence, they rebel and take it out on other people. For someone to become violent they must have experienced all parts of the process otherwise they will escape as a social human being. This is why Gary’s brothers all fitted the social norms, they missed out some of the steps. Gary, however, experienced them all which is why he became who he was.5
However, studies have shown that not all criminals suffered from unhappy childhoods. Scientists at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry have discovered that psychopaths have physically different brains to that of a normal brain. The experiment consisted of comparing the brains of 44 violent adult male offenders, all of which had been diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), with 22 healthy non offenders. 17 of the violent offenders showed the symptoms of ASPD as well as psychopathy. Scans showed that these men had less grey matter in the areas important for understanding other peoples emotions. Nigel Blackwood, who led the study, explained “We describe those without psychopathy as ‘hot headed’ and those with psychopathy as ‘cold hearted’”. As these people were born with abnormalities in the brain these criminals do not respond to treatment as well as others. This means there is need to develop new behavioural treatments as current ones will be less successful. These men have been described as being ‘born to kill’ meaning they were born that way that although nurture may have had some effect their personalities would have developed in a similar way. This means that nature does have some effect in who we become as a person.7
The case study of Dennis Nilsen contrasts to the case of Gary Gilmore. Dennis Nilsen was a British serial killer who took the lives of fifteen men after they passed out from alcohol or slept. Unlike Gary, Nilsen experienced no feelings of hatred or regret towards the crimes he had committed, in some cases Nilsen believed that he was helping his victims. During his interrogation he showed no remorse, he showed no emotion throughout the full thirty hours that his confession lasted. Dennis was raised by his grandparents after his parents divorced. Dennis never showed any rage or cruelty to animals, which many children that turn out to be serial killers exhibit. In fact, he was horrified by cruelties that he had witnessed by others throughout his childhood, however, Dennis was always drawn to death as a child and would often become aroused at the sight of his own body lying still in front of the mirror. Dennis could not hold onto a long term relationship so turned to casual pick-ups. When Dennis was 33 he invited a young man back to his flat, when the man was about to leave he strangled and then drowned the man. Dennis then kept the corpse in his bed for a few days because he thought it was “beautiful”, after a while he hid the body under the floorboards of his flat. Throughout the whole ordeal he felt no remorse or emotion towards what he had done, neither did he have any reason to commit the act such as bouts of hatred and aggression. After he had killed the man he bathed in the bath water that had been used to clean the corpse. Dennis was caught flushing body parts down the sewer, this was the only part of crime that disturbed him.5 6
From this case study you could infer that Nilsen was born to kill, he had no reason to act out against anything, his childhood, although marginally dysfunctional, was perfectly happy and normal. Does this make him the true psychopath?
Nature vs. Nurture Studies:
In London, researchers have conducted an experiment to see if we have moral instinct and what it might look like in action. They asked some volunteers to come in to be tested on. The researchers did not rely on what the volunteers said they would do but rather what they actually did if they found themselves in a difficult situation. As it was too dangerous to make this a real life experience they used virtual reality. Although they knew that it was virtual reality there is a basic part of the brain that cannot distinguish between reality and virtual reality. The volunteers where shown an art gallery. Their role was to take people up to the first floor by operating the lift. There were five people on the first floor and one on the ground floor. A man walks in and demands to be taken to the first floor. As he arrives at the first floor he starts shooting at the five other guests also on that floor. The volunteers must make the decision to move him down or do nothing. If they move him down to the first floor they would be responsible for the murder of the man on the ground floor, but if they do nothing then the five people on the first floor will die but it won’t be their fault. The volunteers described their thought process as ‘panicked’ and that ‘all logical thinking goes out the window you have to revert back to your instincts’. Researchers described this as the ‘conflict between reason and emotion’ it is ‘the immediate need to do something’ that makes the decision for you. The results of the experiment showed that the majority of the volunteers try to save the five and sacrifice the one. This shows that humans are moral beings they try their best to save others, we have a ‘moral impulse to try and do good’. However, it shows that all of us are capable of doing evil things. Most of the volunteers decided to sacrifice the one. They had to press a button to move the lift down, therefore, they are responsible for the murder or that one person on the ground floor.3
Scientists at Yale University were interested to know what instincts we are born with. They wanted to know if babies were born with a sense of good or bad or whether this instinct develops as you grow into an adult, is it something you learn or are you born with it?. They advertised for the experiment and many parents volunteered their children to help find the origin of morality. The scientists devised a play which involved three characters. One character (a tiger) was holding a ball, and there were two other characters next to it (two dogs, one dressed in white the other in blue). The character in the middle passed the ball the one of the characters next to him, then that character politely returned the ball back. The tiger then passes the ball to the other dog, this character keeps the ball and runs away with it. Scientists were intrigued to find out which character the babies will prefer, will they prefer the bad character or the good character? A woman then comes out and shows the child the two dog characters, she does not know which character is the good dog and which is the bad dog. This is so that she does not unconsciously interfere with the results and make the baby choose a particular toy, therefore making the experiment more accurate. Astonishingly, 70% of babies chose the good puppet therefore showing that these babies are drawn towards kindness. The scientists that conducted the experiment stated that the “moral sense we have as adults is already present by the time we reach our first birthday”. But what does this mean for the other 30%? Many people would immediately jump to the conclusion that these babies are unlike other babies, they are drawn to badness, these babies could be categorised as psychopath babies. However, we cannot automatically assume that as many of the babies are likely to have got distracted or fallen asleep or maybe even drawn to the character that was dressed in their favourite colour. Although we cannot assume that all the babies are potentially psychopaths this could be the first insight we get into whether we are born a psychopath or whether it develops throughout our childhood due to the way we are raised and the surroundings we are raised in.3
Neuroscientist, Jim Fallon, specialises in standard clinical disorders. One day a colleague asked him to analyse a selection of different brain scans. Fallon was unaware that these brain scans included the brains of murderers, as well as the brains of normal people, people suffering from schizophrenia, and people suffering from depression. His colleague asked him what he made of the scans. Fallon discovered that one group always had damage to the orbital cortex which is situated right above the eye, he also noticed that another part of the brain looked like it wasn’t working right. This was the temporal lobe which houses the amygdala. The amygdala is the part of the brain that processes our animal drives. After conveying the information back to his colleague he discovered that these people were the group of killers. The areas of abnormality were the areas crucial for controlling impulsivity and emotions. In finding these results he essentially created the signature brain profile of a serial killer. The location of the brain abnormalities indicated why psychopaths could be drawn to extreme activities, it created the biological basis for the urge to kill. However, Fallon was interested to find out if this was enough to make some a psychopath or murderer or were there other factors involved. The next logical step to pursue was to look into whether genes contributed. All physical features have strong genetic contributions. Fallon discovered that in 1993 one family had a history of violence in all the men. After running tests they fond that they all lacked the same gene. This shows that the loss of one gene can dramatically effect a person’s behaviour and personality. This gene was the MAOA gene, scientists soon nicknamed this gene “the warrior gene”. If a person has both elements, the brain abnormalities and the genes, does this mean they are destined to become a killer?3
At a family party, Fallon’s mum brought up the topic of genes and psychopathy. She told Jim to look into his own family history. She mentioned Jims cousin Lizzie who had murdered her cousin, she also told Jim that there had been a bloodline of murderers in that family, 16 to be exact. After hearing this Jim ran a check under his whole family. The results of the brain scans were all normal apart from one, which similar to that of a psychopath’s brain, had no orbital cortex activity or temporal lobe activity. This brain scan belonged to him. He was intrigued to understand why he was not in jail and had not killed anyone so he investigated further. He ran blood tests on the whole family again to see if there were any gene indifferences. Again all but one of the tests was normal, this anomaly was his blood. His genes showed to have the high risk genes that were normally associated with serial killers. He mentioned this to his family and they revealed that “they had always thought something was off” and that he had always had “a hot head, everything you would want in a serial killer he has”. Jim revealed that “[he has] characteristics or traits that are similar to that of a psychopath, [he] would blow off an aunts funeral if [he] knew there was a party that day” he said “that it was not right, I know that now but I still don’t care, I know something’s wrong but I still don’t care and that’s the truth”. After thinking about the results Jim wanted to know why he hadn’t become a serial killer if he had the genetic make up to be one. He concluded that it all depends on your childhood. A person with the warrior gene who experienced an abusive childhood was at high risk of committing a crime. But a child with the warrior gene that did not experience any abuse at a child was not at high risk. After looking through some old family photos Jim realised that he had an “unbelievably wonderful childhood”. He believed that there is a good chance that his stopped him developing into a serial killer, it “washed it away”3
In 1979 to 1999 scientist conducted the Minnesota Twin Family Study. This involved separating identical and fraternal twins from an early age. One of the most famous set of twins from the study were Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, these identical twins were raised apart from 4 weeks old. At age 39 the twins were reunited. Scientists discovered that both suffered from tension headaches and nail biting. Even more astonishingly they both smoked the same brand of cigarette, drove the same type of car and went on holiday to the same beach in Florida. Nancy Segal, an evolutionary psychologist at California State University said, “We were surprised by certain behaviours that showed a genetic influence such as religiosity and social attitudes. [they] surprised us, because we thought those certainly must come from the family environment”. Over the 20 years that the study was conducted they had studied 137 pairs of twins – 81 pairs of identical and 56 pairs of fraternal. The study showed that genetics had a much stronger influence on sexual orientation than they first thought. It was also more prominent in male twins than in female twins. They also found that genetics also played a much larger role on personality than first believed. The study suggested that environment played a much larger part in how their personalities developed when they were separated than when they were together. It also showed that happiness and well being was 50 percent genetic. This shows that who we are today is not all down to how we were brought up and what environment we live in. It is also down to our genetic make up.
Conclusion:
After extensive research I believe that the winner of the Nature vs. Nurture debate is Nurture. After going through all the case studies the part that stood out the most was the unconventional and abusive families that these people had to grow up in. It is no surprise that these people grew up to be the people they are today because they were raised thinking this was normal and a perfectly acceptable thing to do. On the other hand, many of them just wanted to rebel from the families that they grew up in and turned to aggression which evolved into crimes such as rape and murder. However, it would be wrong to completely rule out the nature debate. The studies and experiments that I have covered show extensive research to prove that nature does play a role in who we grow up to be. However, they also show that the way we are raised can influence these genes and make them less prominent in our adult personalities. Therefore, genes do play an important role in who we become, such as whether we will become a serial killer when we are older, but it is nurture that determines whether you will ever be one.