Why are the vast majority of serial killers male?

Answer 1

Positively correlated with these perpetrators:
1. gender (far more males than females)
2. culture (America has produced a disproportionate number of serial killers)

We know that more men than women are diagnosed with anti-social personality disoder, psychopathy, narcissistic personality disorder...

We know that men are far less likely to seek help in general, and this includes medical and psychiatric help (of course).

We know that those men who believe most in gender-role sterotypes (the 'macho man') are the most psychologically distressed, the least happy...and the ones most responsible for causing distress in others.

Add to this already volatile mixture a culture that worships violence and that provides easy availability of guns.

BOOM.

I am (of course) referring to mass-murderers in general. I think that much of this applies to serial killers too - but then specific pathologies unique to each individual need to be addressed: John Wayne Gacy/Ted Bundy/Jeffry Dahmer - three serial killers with very different profiles and MO.

The world's leading authority on psychopaths is Dr. Robert Hare. He is Canadian, and teaches at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

“The type of violence in which they engage is qualitatively different from that of non-psychopathic offenders in that it is likely to be more predatory, motivated by identifiable goals, and carried out in a calculated manner without an emotional context. They tend not to commit crimes of passion, such as during a domestic dispute or extreme arousal. Some theorists believe that psychopaths may be motivated by weak emotions breaking through weaker restraints. They may simply be reacting, showing off or exerting control as a means of proving themselves. For the most part, their crimes are cold-blooded, and they felt excited by them rather than guilty. In those who are serial killers, there appears to be a strong tendency toward sadism…

Psychopathy and the Brain

In a segment of "The Mind," a PBS documentary that looked at many aspects of behavior and the brain, Hare assessed "Al," a middle-aged man with 46 convictions for criminal acts from drugs to bank robbery. Using a neurological diagnostic test to eliminate obvious brain damage, Hare's team then gave Al tests that measure the processing of language. The question under investigation was whether or not there is something measurably different about the brain of a person who has been so socially deviant.

In a clinical interview, Al admitted to being extraordinarily good at lying; said he was never diagnosed as hyperactive; grew up in a violent area of Vancouver, BC, in Canada; and recalled incidents in which he had acted out in anger or in irrational ways, just to prove something about his macho self-image. He felt no concern for his victims, he says, or any remorse.

By the time he was 15, he was in prison, where he mingled with hardcore prisoners. He became more sensitive to how others treated him, and more reactive. He ended up stabbing someone.

Hare first tested Al on a dichotic listening device, through which words came to him via alternating ears. The results appeared to be consistent with the evidence that psychopaths may not process words primarily by left hemisphere activity, but instead involve both hemispheres equally.
The next test was even more revealing. Al watched different words come onto a monitor screen. Some of the words were generally considered to have emotional associations and others were considered neutral. Whereas most people respond more quickly to emotional words, Al's response time was the same to both emotional and neutral words.
"The impetus for this research," Hare says for the documentary, "is the clinical observation that psychopaths can say one thing and do something else. This has perplexed a lot of people. Is it simply lying, dissimulation, or hypocrisy? Probably not. There's more than that involved in it."

Hare points out that some people have described psychopaths as somewhat robotic, two-dimensional, emotionally shallow, and lacking in conscience. They may know intellectually they should not do something, but without the feeling component there could be less motivation to respond to the moral imperative. Their inhibitions for antisocial or violent behavior are much weaker than in normal individuals, and they readily learn and adopt behavior patterns that involve manipulation, deception, and violence to attain their own ends.

Because they don't understand the feelings of others and don't feel remorseful for harming them, psychopaths can easily rationalize their violence or deception as acceptable behavior.

Hare and his colleagues continued this research to learn more about the brain's involvement in psychopathic behaviors. They used whole brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see if there were neurological manifestations of the way psychopaths process different types of words. When non-psychopaths processed negative emotional words (e.g., rape, death, cancer), activity in the limbic regions of the brain increased. For psychopaths there was little or no increased activity in these regions. Curiously, however, there was increased activity in other areas. In short, the emotional word does not have the same limbic implication for psychopaths that it does for normal people.

Limbic system

"They seemed to be like Spock or Data on Star Trek," Hare explains, "What I thought was most interesting was that for the first time ever, as far as I know, we found that there was no activation of the appropriate areas for emotional arousal, but there was over-activation in other parts of the brain, including parts of the brain that are ordinarily devoted to language. Those parts were active, as if they were saying, 'Hey, isn't that interesting.' So they seem to be analyzing emotional material in terms of its linguistic or dictionary meaning."

Yet Hare does not think that psychopathy is caused by brain damage. Instead, he says, "there are anomalies in the way psychopaths process information. It may be more general than just emotional information. In another functional MRI study, we looked at the parts of the brain that are used to process concrete and abstract words. Non-psychopathic individuals showed increased activation of the right anterior/superior temporal cortex. For the psychopaths, that didn't happen."

Hare and his colleagues then conducted an fMRI study using pictures of neutral scenes and unpleasant homicide scenes. "Non-psychopathic offenders show lots of activation in the amygdala [to unpleasant scenes], compared with neutral pictures," he points out. "In the psychopath, there was nothing. No difference. But there was overactivation in the same regions of the brain that were overactive during the presentation of emotional words. It's like they're analyzing emotional material in extra-limbic regions."

"...The Psychopath Defined

The work of Hare and his associates clarified a set of diagnostic criteria that offers a practical approach to both the assessment and treatment of psychopathy. The PCL-R items are grouped around two basic factors, affective/interpersonal features and socially deviant lifestyle (both of which have been divided further into four facets, two each for the two factors). Refocusing the idea of antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy is characterized by such traits as

lack of remorse or empathy
shallow emotions
manipulativeness
lying
egocentricity
glibness
low frustration tolerance
episodic relationships
parasitic lifestyle
persistent violation of social norms...

"...these offenders find victims easily because they were glib, charming, manipulative, and predatory...

Can Psychopaths Change?

Before addressing the treatment issue, let's look at what the PCL-R indicates about risk factors for the tendency among psychopaths to continue to commit crimes and other social violations. While Hare was writing Without Conscience, he was also developing an instrument to apply in another context.

During the early 1990s, the Research Network on Mental Health and the Law of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation examined the relationship between mental disorder and violent behavior directed against others. In this Violence Risk Assessment Study, they devised a comprehensive list of 134 risk factors across four domains (dispositional, historical, contextual, and clinical) that had been associated with violence in prior research, were believed by experienced clinicians to be associated with violence, and were hypothesized to be associated with violence by existing theories of violence. This list included factors not previously studied, such as social support, impulsiveness, anger control, and delusions. Experts in these fields developed risk assessment instruments, and Hare was asked to develop a tool, based on the PCL-R, that would take less time and manpower to administer.

He came up with the PCL:SV, or Screening Version…
Then there are the children: can we spot budding psychopaths and intervene before they became dangerous adults? A version of the PCL-R used for adolescents is the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PVL:YV), developed with Dr. Adelle Forth and Dr. David Kosson. It has proven to be as reliable and valid as its adult counterpart. For younger children, the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD), developed with Dr. Paul Frick, appears to be useful for distinguishing children who show risk factors for the development of psychopathy, such as lying easily and acting without awareness of the consequences, from those who merely have social and emotional problems.

"Identification of these risk factors," says Hare, "is necessary if we are ever to develop early interventions for what might become adult psychopathy."…

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/psychology/robert_hare/10.html

Annotated Bibliography Below:
http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/juvenile-violence/juvenile-psychopathy.htm

Answer 2

Doctor Hugo says:
Due to Limbic size differences in the brain men are generally less connected to others than are women. Disconnection from others increases the risk of completed suicides.
Perhaps this is also related to the reason for more males being serial killers or perhaps Doctor Hugo is full of ****.

I'm going to go with Juniper on this one.
PS. Can you send me a list of the other 866 reasons. I'd like to have a skim through them.



Edit:
A quick, slightly unrelated point.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=76992
"The study is one of only a few that have shown how hormones other than testosterone influence aggression in mammals.
"This goes against the common belief that testosterone is the hormone that regulates aggression. There are now several studies showing that, in some species, estrogen plays a key role in aggressiveness as well," study co-author Randy Nelson, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in a prepared statement."

Answer 3

The majority of men have horrible coping skills when compared to women. This may lead to depression or an urge to commit violence if his depression is left untreated.

Men also mature later in life than women. So it can be a dangerous mix if a man has a fully mature (strong) body but still has an underdeveloped frontal lobe.

Answer 4

My answer only raises more questions, but I would say that men are just more violent than women.

Men commit almost all the violent crime in the world. Wars are mostly started and waged by men as well.

Why are men more violent? Good question.

Answer 5

The most current research links "cold-blooded" killing with a lack of the proper fear or anxiety when faced with stress. Perhaps we can see more research on this in the future, and how it relates to gender.

They also know that little boys seem to be more sensitive, psychologically, to developing attachment disorders, and avoiding those disorders is key in helping the child to develop empathy. Reason #867 why I'm against institutional daycare - it's a risk factor for attachment disorders in children.


EDIT Gray: NO scientific evidence? Have you been living under a rock?
"a major 1990 American report found that a higher proportion of children under age one in day care "show anxious-avoidance attachment to their mothers than do home-reared infants". Commenting on the new research, Mary Carlson of the Harvard Medical School said, "Our findings support clinical research showing that infants cared for in (daycare) institutions grow slowly and have behavioural retardation".

Hey...just look at the crime rate in Japan generally, where at-home mothers are the norm. OOPS, that's not actually EVIDENCE of much of anything! EDIT: I'm just being silly here - not serious. It's the correlary of Gray's "Sweden argument"

The book "Ghosts in the Nursery- the causes of Juvenile crime" can help enlighten you about the place of attachment theory in prediciting violent behavior. You really need to read some up-to date research in child development before making sweeping claims like that, Graymalikn.

Let me know if you need a link to the broad-scale study about the "high quality" Swedish care system. You seem a little confused, since you couldn't read the DIRECT correlation between negative psychological outcomes and use of Swedish, high quality center based care before age three that I posted earlier.

EDIT:
Attachment disorders + Genetic predisposition to mental illness and/or early trauma = Violent behavior

Daycare ----> Attachment disorders

I NEVER said that daycare leads to serial killers. Attachment "issues", however, are well known to be a component of many, many murderers. A complete lack of empathy is *one part* of creating a killer, and an attachment disorder is often the root of this lack of empathy. There are many, many new studies about this phenomenon. Boys seem to develop them more often. Got it now?

You were the one who had to "point out" that daycare doesn't lead to psychopathology, which is something I never claimed in the first place. Then you brought up the very silly evidence that, since crime is low in Sweden, institutional daycare must be just wonderful for children. That's like saying having a lot of cars in one area causes people to shoot each other, since there's a correlation between big cities and violent crime.

Researchers are trying to come up with various reasons WHY someone would develop "no remorse or empathy". There are beginning to find a REASON why some with a genetic predisposition to mental illness do not become killers, and why others do. One of those causes is an "attachment disorder" which causes a child to have trouble developing REMORSE AND EMPATHY. Empathy *must* be learned in the first 3 years of life, and daycare directly interferes with this in SOME babies. Usually BOYS.

Answer 6

Uh, that should say .the majority of CONVICTED serial killers.

Answer 7

Because god chooses too its not a question of why? its a question of when? when will it stop? go to god.

Answer 8

Mentally ill men are more likely to become violent against others than mentally ill women, who tend to turn it on themselves. This is probably because of the hormonal differences between men and women.

Answer 9

Why are the majority of child killers women?

Answer 10

Men are more physically aggressive than women... and more proactive in conflict. Women do things more in defense and will attack more to protect herself than to cause harm. Men attack to crush and destroy. Of course this is a BIG generalization.

Answer 11

Same reason there are only male big scientists (yes yes I know windscreenwipers Iam talking inventing something that takes SERIOUS effort) and only males to start up big companies, Balls.