I would highly recommend the series ‘What makes a murderer?’, as it summarises the importance of considering the impacts of biological, social and environmental factors that can accumulate to psychopathic behaviour. One of the episodes explores the inner workings of John, who shot and killed a man in a bar after a fight. Following an intricate brain scan, results showed that within John’s brain his amygdala was smaller on one side. This is commonly found in psychopaths as the amygdala triggers the feeling of fear, thus with a smaller amygdala people often engage in more reckless and violent activity. The Amygdala is the seat of emotion – the part of the brain that triggers ‘fight or flight’ even the smallest irregularity within this part of the brain can make a huge difference in a person’s behaviour.

Additionally, John’s striatum, the rewarding part of the brain, was much larger than an average person. This means that John seeks to partake in more dangerous activities that provide the greatest rewards. Might John’s biological wiring have pre-disposed his behaviour before the murder, creating a person who is lacking fear, taking bigger risks to receive bigger rewards? This captivating episode inflicted a great deal of self-reflection, previously I had always assumed that murderers, like John, were typically in control of their actions and committed crime due to their desire to do so. However, the documentary sparked an uncomfortable possibility that often peoples actions, no matter how violent, aren’t always within their control.

Should John be brutally punished if this situation was largely influenced by his biology?

 

The documentary also discusses the importance of considering a person’s environment from an early age, taking into account whether someone had endured abuse, neglect, trauma. All of which can have a surprisingly long-lasting psychological toll on a person. In John’s case, facing abandonment at the age of 3 by his mother, he failed to recall any happy childhood memories which can have a huge effect on how he experiences and processes emotion. Maternal abandonment especially is said to ‘turn on and off’ people’s genes like a switch. When a child is abandoned, they can numb their emotions as emotion resembles pain, it is this act of numbing which increases the risk of developing a psychopathic personality. This triggers the question of whether this ‘psychopath gene’ is given at birth or caused by John’s environment in which he grew up in? Shockingly, this episode states that only 25% of murderers have psychotic genes, leaving a remaining 75% the product of, most likely, poor early experiences.

 

In the UK alone there are over eight and a half thousand prisoners serving time for violence and murder – that is higher than the total prison population than in any other European country, and even America. The documentary introduces the question of free will, arguing that lots of our behaviour seems to be biologically predetermined. There are two main factors that make up a person: the genes they were born with, and the environment they grew up in. Thus, is it unfair to say that revenge or anger ‘makes a murderer’? It is clearly crucial to understand both the biological and responding psychological cause for committing murder as it is impossible pin down the reason of violence from people like John without a holistic approach and exploring the person entirely.

By Niamh Boy