How does someone become sociopathic?

Question

Is it inborn?or environment influenced?

Answer 1

Ahhh, the eternal debate. Environmental or inborn. Some say sociopaths are a product of their environment (poor parental role models, abuse, neglect, negative peer influence) etc... and some believe in the "bad apple", that some people are just born "bad".
I, personally, believe both can and do happen. I've seen people sociopathic because they were abused verbally, physically and mentally. But I've seen sociopaths who had ideal wealthy parents who treated them like gold. So why would they be sociopaths?
Nobody really knows for sure. Sociopathic ideology is closer related to how an individual responds to their personal environment than to clear pathology of the brain, such as when someone is schizophrenic. A sociopath doesn't have a "brain" disease, in other words. There isn't a depletion or abnormality of brain chemicals usually, or nothing that can be noted on a CT scan. And it's not an inherited mental illness like schizophrenia.
So, if I had to choose one or the other, I'd say it's primarily influenced by environment and the person's reaction to his/her environment even if that environment is what society would consider "normal."

Answer 2

I don't think anybody knows. Some think it's geneetic, but many others think it's enivoromental, and many think that it is a combination of both. You can have people who've been brought up well in amazing situations but turn out to be sociopathic, or you can have people who were treated appallingly as a child who turn out sociopathic, but then you can also have people from similar backgrounds who turn out fine. It's likely to be that people have a genetic predisposition to it, and then certain events trigger it off. So I would say it's a mixture of both.

Answer 3

the answer is yes. actually that's a debate that has a rather long history in psychology, usually worded as "nature vs nurture". As one is usually nurtured by those who's genes they carry it makes the matter somewhat difficult to answer, though generally its considered to be a bit of both. sociopaths tendency's can usually be traced to something in an individuals emotional development which would suggest nurture. however there is a small percentage of the male population that is often diagnosed as a sociopath that are referred to as "supermen or super-male" that carry an extra male chromosome (xyy instead of normal xy) strangely the vast majority of these individuals are spending life terms behind bars. so basically there is no definitive answer to your question.