What Makes Us Good Or Evil
Psychopathic Killers
Unsettling but revealing
Professor Mel Slater
Scientists are daring to investigate this unsettling question. They're
trying to peel back the mask of the psychopathic killer. What separates us
from these terrifying people? What they're finding is revealing something
about the good and evil in us all.
Now scientists are rewriting our ideas about right and wrong, even of
crime and punishment. What they're finding could turn your world upside
down.
In London, a group of researchers have devised a rather unusual
experiment. They wanted to see if we had a moral instict, and what it
might look like in action.
They've invited volunteers to face a stark moral choice, but they've
added a twist. They're not going to rely on what the volunteers say they
would do, but what they actually do.
Professor Mel Slater: "No-one really knows themselves that well
to know how they would respond in an extreme situation. Now, we wouldn't
want to manufacture an extreme situation in physical reality, but in
virtual reality you can. Everyone knows that what they do has no real
consequences, but nevertheless there's a basic part of the brain that
doesn't know virtual reality, it just makes people respond as they would
in reality albeit maybe at a lesser level of intensity."
The volunteers find themselves in an art gallery. Their role is to
operate a lift and take visitors to the first floor.
Five people are on the first floor and one on the ground floor. A man
comes in and asks to be taken to the first floor where he starts
shooting the five people. Does the volunteer move him back down, risking
the life of the person on the ground floor in the hope of saving the
five or do they do nothing?
Virtual Reality
If they move the gunman down, they will be responsible for the death
of that one person, but if they leave him there more people will die,
but it won't be their fault.
Professor Slater: "They have to do the action, they have to make
the lift come down, so they have to press a button to kill one."
One of the questions Mel's asking is how volunteers make this tough
decision.
Emma, volunteer
Emma, one of the volunteers offers "I wasn't really thinking too much,
I definitely acted with my emotions in there, Once he started shooting
it was very much instinctive, Oh I should get him out of the way of
these people." Another says "I was stressed, I panicked, I was
surprised, I couldn't then manage operate the buttons properly."
Mel studied hundreds of people and has found a consistent pattern. He
reports "I think its a conflict between reason and emotion, there's
an immediate reaction an immediate need to do something and then layered
on top of this, a bit slower the cognitive response, the rational
analytic response, but by that time its too late."
At Yale University scientists have designed an ingenious experiment.
They wanted to see if babies are born good or bad. Hundreds of parents
have volunteered their children. The two scientists behind the project
are Karen Wynne and Paul Bloom. Professor Bloom explains "I would
give a year of my life to spend 5 minutes as a baby to be able to
recapture what it feels like to be that sort of creature. We're
interested in the origin of morality, the origin of good and evil. We
want to see what people start off with, do they start with good impulses
or bad impulses and how does that develop into an adult sense of right
and wrong." They wanted to find out what is in a baby's brain.
Trying to unlock this secret they devised a kind of morality play, that
each baby would watch and then gauge their reaction. About 70% of the
babies showed a tendency toward good.
Professor Paul Bloom
But, if 70% choose the good guy, that leaves 30% who don't. So, what
does that say about those babies? Prof. Bloom "We've always
wondered about that. What do you do with the babies who reach for the
bad guy. The sort of sexy explanation is that these are psychopath
babies, these are babies who see the world differently, who actually
prefer the bad guy. I think that's a logical possibility but more likely
it is just random as in any experiment."
The high percentage of babies who pick the good puppet is striking.
These are the first experiments to show that a moral instinct really
seems present in babies Prof. Bloom "I would suggest that the
morals we have as adults are already present by the time we reach our
first birthday." Most of us seem to start life with good impulses
not bad. The inclination to help each other, to empathise seems to be
built into our brains. We feel distress when we see someone in pain, but
why? The fact that this is such a strong feeling has inspired a new and
bold scientific quest.
Professor Paul Zak of Claremont University "Human Beings are
obsessed with morality, we need to know why people are doing what
they're doing, and I am obsessed with morality I really want to know
when people are good and evil and why that occurs." Paul Zak
is a neuro-scientist, his mission is to try and trace the basis of our
morality He explains "So, I was really looking for a chemical basis
for these behaviours. If there's a chemical involved that means we can
not only measure it, but we can manipulate it."
Paul wanted to find the actual
chemicals that drive our behaviour. He's using a group of people who
don't know each other well, but are going to have to work together if
they want to succeed. Paul thinks that their brain chemistry may undergo
a transformation. They may release a chemical that will make them feel
empathy. If this is true, this chemical could be driving our morality.
It could be the moral molecule. Paul expounds "We see lots of
cooperation in the world, but we don't know why. We begin wondering if
there is an underlying biological basis for cooperation. If there was a
biology of cooperation, could there be an underlying chemical foundation
for this?" One of the chemical he's interested in he knows is
active within families, but he's never looked for it in a team of
relative strangers. He measured the level of oxytocin in the blood before
and after a pre-match warm-up ritual on the rugby field. The levels
converged getting them in sync with each other. This would have helped
them feel bonded and confirmed what Paul's found in his many laboratory
experiments - oxytocin seems to be the key to empathy.
But, the results showed something else, another hormone testosterone
had increased and this drives aggressive behaviour, so is testosterone
the opposite of the moral molecule. Paul "Oxytocin makes us more
selfless, testosterone makes us more selfish" Paul believes that
what happens on the sports field reflects our moral battlefield in life.
What we experience as a battle between good and evil, may be a chemical
battle waging inside us.
Perhaps being moral is achieving a balance. For each one of us that
process will be different, but what happens if you try and disturb that
balance, if you make someone more aggressive than they naturally are?
What does it do to a human if you suppress their own moral instinct?
Not all experiments are planned. In Quantico Virginia the marines are
part of a radical training programme that has implications far beyond
this camp What marines have to do will go against their natural moral
instinct. Lt Col Joseph Shusko "Its not human nature to take somebody's
life, I don't think its easy to kill someone, I don't think its easy to
even think about killing somebody." Because its so unnatural the
marines learn to fight step by step making it a routine process. So
killing becomes part of the process and they don't think about it.
Equipping them with the ability to kill must be combined with the
motivation to do so. In the past, that motivation was often hate. What
they found was that ignoring the marine's natural sense of morality was
starting to destroy them. Taking away all their ethical parameters was
removing something fundamental to their brains. Marines kill, but only
where necessary to protect another life. It seems our moral instinct
can't be suppressed without paying a heavy price.
But, if our natural instinct is to do no harm, how can we explain
those seem totally devoid of this feeling? Who have no revulsion at
taking a life?
Scientists have embarked on a new dark voyage to understand evil.
They've turned to the serial killer, psychopath.
Prof. Jim Fallon
One man has done more than anyone to understand the mind of a
psychopath. Psychologist Professor Bob Hare set out on this trail 30
years ago. He was determined to penetrate what lay beneath the mask.
"I'm looking at two pictures of very well known infamous serial
killers: Jeffrey Dahmer & Ted Bundy. You look at the pictures and
see ordinary people, which is what allowed them to behave as they did.
Thet were very deviant cold-blooded killers." This was a world he
came into by accident. "I needed a job, and the only job I could find
was, at the time, as the sole psychologist at the OBC penitentiary, a
maximum-security institution in Vancouver." Bob found himself
face-to-face with psychopaths. He wanted to find the rules of a
psychopath. Bob drew up a check list defining their core personality
trtaits. "The essential features of pyschopathy include a profound
lack of empathy, general callousness toward other people, these are
people without a conscience with shallow ego-centred emotions."
He then devised an experiment, looking into their brains. A
psychopathic killer who volunteered was Anthony Frazelle. The evidence
seems to suggest that psychopaths have blunted emotional lives which
should be apparent in their language. Bob shows Frazells both real and
made-up words and asked him to spot the difference. Some of those words
would have an emotional charge. Most people would see an emotive word
differently to a neutral word, a psychopath doesn't. He ran the
experiment with dozens of psychopaths and got the same result. The
results were so dramatic that reviewers didn't believe they came from
real people.
Psychopaths lack empathy amd emotion, but what else can we see if we
peer into the brain.
In California, neuroscientist Jim Fallon picks up the quest.. He had
specialised in standard clinical disorders, now he was about to become
an expert in the brains of psychopaths. His colleagues had asked him to
analyse a number of brain scans without knowing the patient history. He
noticed one group that had similar damage to the orbital cortex and the
front part of the temporal lobe. After he had made the observation his
colleagues revealed these to be the brains of killers. The areas that
looked abnormal are crucial for controlling impulsivity and emotions.
Fallon's images seemed to confirm what Hare's work had suggested.
If we have established that the mind's of psychopaths are different,
th next question is why? Back in Vancouver the direction seemed clear,
the path to pursue was genes. The search was on, were there genes that
linked to violence? In 1993 the breakthrough came with one family's
history. Here, all the men had a background of violence and all lacked
the same gene. Prof Fallon "There was one gene that was missing.
What was important was that the loss of one gene profoundly affected
behaviour" It then emerged that just being born with one variant of
this gene could also predispose you to violent behaviour. The MEOA gene
became known as The Warrior gene.
It seemed that it could be possible to trace the hallmark of evil in
people's brains and genes, so did this mean that if you had both
elements you were destined to become a killer? For Jim Fallon, this
question was about to become deeply pesonal. At a regular family party a
casual remark by his mother took him by surprise. He had a cousin who
had killed her father, and there was a history of killing in her
family.. Jim took a bold decision to run a check on the entire family
for the genes and brain structure linked to violent psychopathic
behaviour. The results of the brain scans came back first. When he
looked at the results one scan stood out as a classic pattern of a
psychopath. The only trouble was, it was his own! He then did the gene
tests looking for, not only, the warrior gene but other traits like impulsivity,
and again the result pointed at him.
Now Jim started asking himself some unsettling questions, but the
reaction from his family was to unsettle him even further. His son and
wife were not surprised by the results, they recognised his temper and
hot-headednes. His son confessed to being scared of him at times. Jim
was forced to be honest with himself "I have characteristics or
traits, some of which are psychopathic, yeah"
But if Jim had the brain of a killer, why wasn't he one? The answer
is that whether genes are triggered or not will depend on what happens
in your childhood. Simply having the warrior gene does not mean that you
will be violent
