Psychopaths:

Born or
made?
Melissa Rezk
Psychology
University of Balamand
Index
 Definition of psychopathy
 Psychopaths purposes
 Theories
 Checklist
 Gender
 Genetic
 Environmental
 Examples
What is psychopathy?
 Personality disorder, characterized by
 Callousness
 Lack of empathy
 Self-centredness
 Remorselessness
 Persistent antisocial behavior
 “Against” society, social norms
Purpose?
4 Major Motives
 Visionary-god/devil
 Mission oriented-”rid the world of…”
 Hedonistic-pleasure from killing
 Power/control
Why?
 Theories-possible causes
 Biological-born violent, abnormal brain activity

 Fractured Identity Syndrome-traumatic events fracture

personality
 Social Process Theory-turn to crime due to peer, family,

or friend pressure
Psychopathy checklist
 Hervey Cleckley
16 qualities that became the standards of which psychopathy
was studied.
 Robert Hare

20 qualities “Gold standard”

Psychopathy Check List-Revised
(PCL-R)
Developed as research tool to study psychopathy personality
traits
Interview/collateral information provides data for assessing 20
areas of personality/behavior score ranging from 0 to 40
Two factors:
 Factor I: callousness/ unemotional
 Factor II: impulsivity/ antisocial behaviour
PCL-R factor analysis. Factor I (callousness/
unemotional)
 Comprised of items relating to glibness and superficial charm, a
grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, being conning or
manipulative, shallow affect, callousness and lack of empathy,
failure to accept responsibility and an incapacity for remorse or
guilt. In summary it relates to emotional life and the quality of
interpersonal relationships and indicates a history of selfish, callous
and remorseless use of other people.
PCL-R factor analysis. Factor II (impulsivity/
antisocial behaviour)
 Scores impulsive and antisocial behaviour and is
comprised of items that indicate need for stimulation and
proneness to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, poor
behavioural controls, early behavioural problems,
impulsivity, irresponsibility, juvenile delinquency and a
history of revocation of conditional release.
 twin studies because of the advantage of permitting for the
separate estimation of genetic, shared environmental, and
non-shared environmental aspects to features, behaviors
and disorders, through comparison of identical and
fraternal twins.
Gender differences?
 2,604 twins
 17 years old
 Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) and the
Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
 Result?
 Male twins displayed more psychopathic behavior.
 Biological side of psychopaths:
Research confirms that psychopaths
often have structural and
functional impairments to the
connections between emotional
areas (e.g., the amygdala) and
brain areas controlling decision-
making and conscience
(prefrontal cortex).

Diagram from Motzkin et al,

(2011) shows reduced
connectivity in psychopaths as
indexed by fMRI
Genetics?
 Professor Declan Murphy, Dr Michael Craig and Dr Marco
Catani from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College
 dissimilarities in the brain
 white matter that attach the amygdale to the orbitofrontal
cortex, the region that handle decision making, named the
uncinate fasciculus.
 in vivo diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-
MRI)
 remarkable decrease in the solidity of the small particles
that complete the construction of the uncinate fasciculus of
psychopaths as opposed to non-psychopathic people with
the same age and IQ.
 Amygdala
is reduced
 variant of a
gene
linked to
violent
behavior:
the MAO-A
Psychopathy & FFM
Result?
 Psychopaths may be born.
Environmental?
 fifty-one twin
 Fifteen studies
 Genetic influences explained 49%
 shared environmental influences accounted for 0%
 the non-shared environment explained the remaining 51%
Result?
 Psychopaths may be made by the surroundings.
Judiciary?
 Lessen the sentence
Herman Mudgett (H. H. Holmes):
America’s First Serial Killer
“I was born with the devil in me. I
could not help the fact that I was a
murderer….I was born with the Evil
One standing as my sponsor beside
the bed where I was ushered into the
world, and he has been with me
since.”
- H. H. Holmes
Unconfirmed number of victims—
somewhere between 4 and 200.
Serial Killers
 Jack the Ripper: Responsible for the murders of
prostitutes from the Whitechapel Area of London in 1888,
Jack the Ripper’s identity is yet unknown. His victims were
prostitutes and they were brutally murdered and some of
their internal organs were surgically removed by the killer.
Serial Killers
 Ed Gein: He was a famous serial killer
and proved to be an inspiration for
Thomas Harris for creating the famous
character of Hannibal Lecter in "The
Silence of the Lambs". Ed Gein would
skin his victims, exhume corpses and
then decorate his home with parts of their
bodies and use the skin to make clothes
and furniture items. He died on the 26th
of July, 1984 in a mental institution.
Serial Killers
 John Wayne Gacy—
businessman who
entertained children as
“Pogo the Clown.” Murdered
32 young men and buried
them in the crawl space
beneath his house. Became
known as the “Killer Clown.”
Serial Killers
 Aileen Wuornos: An American
Serial Killer, she was a
prostitute and was put to death
by lethal injection on the 9th of
October, 1992. She was
charged with killing seven men,
who she claimed had attempted
to rape her while she was
working as a prostitute.
Therapy?
 Most therapeutic intervention has been unsuccessful with
psychopaths
 Therapeutic community had an iatrogenic effect in one study (Harris
et al., 1991)!
Conclusion?
 Male has more psychopathic tendencies
 Both genetic and environmental factors play a role in
psychopaths
 Therapy is unsuccessful
 Will have lesser sentence in jail