• Question: Do you think psychopathy is a result of nature or nurture ?

    Asked by anon-241531 to Ross, Natalia, Martin, Gabriela, Ellie on 18 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Martin Johnsson

      Martin Johnsson answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      Mind you, I’m not a psychiatric geneticist, so psychopathy isn’t really my area. I have, however, done some work in behavioural genetics, even if it is in chickens … 🙂

      So I have to say, as a behavioural geneticist, it’s seldom really “nature” or “nurture”, it’s almost always both, in some kind of complex mixture. How animals, including humans, feel and behave is very complicated, and responsive to the environment, so it can’t ever really be just “in the genes”. On the other hand, genetics can play a role in behaviour, so it’s not necessarily all nurture either.

      As is often the case in science, the answer is more along the lines of: “It depends, and it’s complicated”… I’m sorry that it’s a bit of a fuzzy answer. 🙂

    • Photo: Eleanor Spence

      Eleanor Spence answered on 19 Mar 2020:

      Outside of science I am also very interested in true crime. But as Martin said, I am also not qualified in this area…I just find it very interesting. I would also agree that it is likely a combination of both nature and nurture. Though a very small proportion of psychopaths are serial killers, many serial killers are psychopaths and you can see similarities in the upbringing of many infamous murderers throughout history.

      There are several podcasts available on spotify if you are interested in learning more!

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