Criminal Psychopaths

Psychopaths are identified as people who are emotionally lacking in psychological terms. They lack empathy based upon emotions with their victims. Although they have verbal abilities, they lack complete understanding, which is a capacity to appreciate moral rules responding to their choice of actions. These people are not serialized criminals, as their offenses are usually not significant and are rather considered to be social than legal. A psychopath is one who can get away with illegal behavior in his own interest. A psychopath suffers from an antisocial personality disorder.

However, more recently, a study led by King’s College London has claimed that there are differences between the brains of psychopaths and other criminal offenders diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Dr. Nigel Blackwood who led the research is quoted as saying “We describe those without psychopathy as 'hot-headed' and those with psychopathy as ‘cold-hearted’.” This statement shows a clear distinction between what should be interpreted as a lack of self-control and ability to repress impulses and what should be diagnosed as psychopathy.
The study took MRI scans of 66 men, two thirds of which were offenders who had been diagnosed with antisocial personality whilst the other third were non-offenders considered to not have any personality disorders. Of the 44 offenders, 17 met the diagnosis criteria for psychopathy (ASPD+P) assessed by the guidelines stated in the DSM-IV. Researchers saw that the members of the study diagnosed as psychopaths had notably less grey matter in areas associated with moral behaviour and understanding other peoples’

Psychopaths have been around for more than a century, and have found themselves to be able to make the public fear them. Belle Gunness, the Zodiac Killer, and John Wayne Gacy are all examples for the character traits compatible with psychopathy and have been able to provide more reason to the research of psychopaths. Statistically, psychopathy is found in three percent of the male population and in one percent of one percent of the female population. A psychopath’s behavior of exploitation, lying, recklessness, and arrogance has been studied to further understand how their brain structure is different in MRI scans and how they are able to use special abilities to catch its victims. Many research studies have been able to provide more information

Unfortunately, changing the biological composition of their brain is not as easily achieved. Studies have found multiple areas of interest when studying the brain structures in psychopaths. These minor differences provide a world of knowledge into what composes a psychopath. Since each area of the brain serves a specific function, determining the effects of abnormalities correlates to the area of interest. Due to the major costs associated with many tests, they are not performed unless indicated. Brain imaging research on psychopathy: Implications for punishment, prediction, and treatment in youth and adults provides us with the very new research that has been conducted on both adult psychopaths, and juveniles that display callous unemotional traits (CU) and have disruptive behavior disorder (DBD) (Umbach et al., 2015). Research done has not given conclusive results that fits for each and every psychopath, but an area of commonality is the amygdala. “In addition to their finding of significant bilateral volume reductions in psychopaths, Yang et al. (2009) identified localized surface deformations in four of the 13 nuclei: the basolateral, lateral, cortical, and central nuclei.” (Umbach et al., 2015, p.296). The paralimbic structure is seen as the emotion processing center of the brain, controlling all emotions including empathy and conditioned fear

Sixteen psychopaths and sixteen nonpsychopaths were identified and chosen to participate in the study based on demographic, cognitive and substance abuse variables. The researchers went through this to assure that the two samples were very similar in these three categories of variables. The samples were shown three different picture sets each of 25 pictures: moral (immoral actions in an unpleasant setting), nonmoral (nonmoral actions in an unpleasant setting) and neutral (nonmoral actions in a neutral setting). The participants were asked to rate the pictures on a 1-5 scale with 5 being the highest on extent on moral violation. They were told that this was based on their own moral beliefs and not what society would think. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was done during the trials to show the brain activity of the participants. This was done to determine whether there was increased activity with higher or lower ratings. In moral decision making, psychopaths were shown to have less to no activity in the anterior temporal and ventromedial cortex when compared to the increased activity with nonpsychopaths during moral tasks. But they still ranked them properly, but without the activation. The reduced activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex shows reduced moral decision making

Contributions such as biological and environmental that create a psychopath. Biological contributions such as having damage to the frontal lobe can change the intended function and create psychopathic

Studies with psychopaths have further located the reward-dominant cognitive style to hyperactive nucleus accumbens during reward anticipation (Hosking et al., 2017; Buckholtz et al., 2010). Importantly, with weaker connectivity within the circuit, it seems that cortical regions are failed to update both positive and negative valence in CU traits and psychopathy. During reward anticipation, CU traits and psychopathy are negatively related to prefrontal cortex activity (Murray et al., 2017; Veroude et al, 2016; Hosking et al., 2017); and psychopaths shown diminished left amygdala and OFC activation during punishment anticipation (Birbaumer et al., 2005). As mentioned, psychopaths have inverted sense of reward. It is possible that individuals with CU or psychopathic traits are not only incapable in learning from social punishment, but they are also prone to seek rewards from aggression due to reward insensitivity.

Abusive upbringing, anything from emotional deprivation to wrong disciplinary rules affects psychopaths (377). They also have low sense of moral development. In fact, they do not have a sharp sense of what is right and what is wrong (276). Killing and causing harm to others may not be considered “bad” from psychopaths’ judgment. Other people may be just perceived as mere objects of pleasure, or torture. The textbook and the articles basically state the same concepts of brain abnormalities to explain psychopathic behaviors. The amygdala, along with other regions of the brain can explain some cruel behaviors. Similarly, during the early stage of development of the child, some trauma such as violent upbringing can also accentuate violent behavior in the future.

The question for this paper is, why do individuals with high levels of psychopathy traits have a hard time recognizing emotions and distinguishing what is fair or unfair? The term psychopath is defined as, “an individual incapable of experiencing remorse” (Watson, N. V., & Breedlove, S. M., 2012, p. 319). What causes a person to be considered a psychopath? It is hypothesized that since there is reduced activity in the frontal cortex, that it may be the reason it impairs the ability to control impulsive behavior. Watson and Breedlove (2012) stated that psychopaths are often intelligent characters with superficial charm that has poor self-control, a large sense of self-worth, little to no feelings of remorse, and someone who sometime commit violent

Psychopathy is usually defined as a personality disorder characterized by antisocial behaviour, lack of empathy and remorse and bold superficial behaviour. A checklist developed by Dr Bob Hare identifies the key traits of a psychopath which is used universally to identify psychopaths. The main features of psychopaths include:

When growing up as a child, I have always been greatly interested in the criminology field and the aspects of the criminal mind. As such, when I came across a topic pertaining to psychopaths and their behavior I was unequivocally intrigued. However I never quite fully understood what makes an individual a psychopath. The psychopathic concept was peculiar to me, and had many questions: Are psychopathic individuals a result from birth or poor nurturing?

The term Psychopath is used to describe viscous people who don’t feel and have a tendency to do unexpected things that can often be destructive and unpredictable. That’s why they have been a great interest to many people in the world to the point where they show up in movies, books, and TV shows. What makes them so interesting is the fact that they seem to be just regular people on the streets, and around normal people who would feel at ease with them and may sometimes be drawn to. In reality they lack emotions such as fear or distress, which leads them to do serious crimes such as murder and rape. Many are able to live within society. But psychologists are increasingly viewing psychopaths as less of a way of being, and more as a mental illness. We often relate psychopaths as criminals

The jurisdiction of psychopathy is a terrifying disorder. Sufferers often develop antisocial behavior, marked by maladaptive personality traits. For centuries, many causes behind this disorder have been speculated, but the etiology remains inconclusive. There are three mainstream etiologies presented today, however they consist of biological, environmental, and social factors which may be equal in support. If the rise of psychopathy develops from biosocial conditions, is there an effective treatment and therefore cure for an adult psychopath? There is vast and varied literature which attempts to explain every detail about this confounding disorder.

Psychopathy is a disease of the mind, in which the psychological state of someone has emotional or behavioral problems serious enough to require psychiatric evaluation. Psychopaths have no concern for the feelings of others and a complete disregard of any sense of social obligation. Psychopaths are characterized by lack of empathy, poor impulse control and manipulative behaviors. They use charm, manipulation, intimidation, and the use of severe to mild violence to satisfy their own needs.

It may be possible that with the addition of negative environmental experiences criminal behavior develops and that without such negative environmental experiences a biological tendency may never otherwise transform into criminal behavior. In Criminal psychology, the author states, “Psychopathy is a personality disorder that is characterized by a coherent set of affective deficits, lifestyle factors, interpersonal deficits, and behaviors that strongly correlate with antisocial behavior” (DeLisi, 2013, ch.9). This paper will discuss the role that brain damage, abnormalities in brain structure, and disturbances in brain chemistry may play in criminal behavior.