Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop work
Speaker 1: dot com. Pay you. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert la and I'm Christian saber Hey.
Speaker 1: So did you know that you cannot only listen to
Speaker 1: us on this podcast, but you can engage with us
Speaker 1: on social media and read stuff that we've written, and
Speaker 1: watch stuff that we're in. We're all over the place.
Speaker 1: We're not just in your earbuds. It's a crazy time
Speaker 1: to be alive. Yeah, it is. It is indeed, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Tumbler, where
Speaker 1: we are blow the mind. On all those platforms, we're
Speaker 1: curating all kinds of weird science that we're not putting
Speaker 1: into the episodes, all the stuff that Robert and Joe
Speaker 1: and I find throughout the day that is just utterly bizarre. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we've got videos like our Monster Science series
Speaker 1: and lots of blog posts. Robert in particular is profound
Speaker 1: and prolific on our blog side. So if you want
Speaker 1: to hear more from us about I don't know, music,
Speaker 1: Monster science, which would you cook up this week? Um?
Speaker 1: I'm actually working on another Higher Human Forms post, which
Speaker 1: is a body modification series that I've been doing with
Speaker 1: a focus more on uh, sort of religious themes and
Speaker 1: body modification and sort of like religious trans humanism. I
Speaker 1: can't remember we talked about American Mary before. I think
Speaker 1: it may have come up a few times. You've seen it? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a very interesting horror film. Yeah, great horror movie, really
Speaker 1: interesting take on the body modification community. And uh directed
Speaker 1: by twin female sisters that just did an excellent job
Speaker 1: and co star in the movie. Yeah, and they're Canadian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that, right, all right. System. One more
Speaker 1: way that you can interact with us, especially if you
Speaker 1: want to talk about horror movies, because that seems like
Speaker 1: a big thing that goes on there is on Fridays
Speaker 1: at noon Eastern Standard time, we are on periscope uh
Speaker 1: and basically for you know, twenty minutes, we will sit
Speaker 1: there and uh answered questions that you have. Last week,
Speaker 1: Joe brought a pretty interesting article about outer space to
Speaker 1: the table that we discussed with our fans on there. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll tell you, you know, some kind of behind
Speaker 1: the scenes stuff too, like what we're recording that week,
Speaker 1: what what kind of you know things are coming up
Speaker 1: on the show and Vice versa. But in this episode
Speaker 1: we are discussing UM an interesting and troubling topic and
Speaker 1: UH and then that is the idea of psychopathy in
Speaker 1: children and UH an adolescence. UM. This is I definitely
Speaker 1: want to preface here that that I I am particularly
Speaker 1: I'm approaching this UH topic not only is someone who
Speaker 1: just finds the trope itself kind of fascinating from a
Speaker 1: cultural standpoint. You know, you can't get away from the
Speaker 1: killer child, the terrible Tieu child, the what the the infant.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a trope I guess or archetype that
Speaker 1: I think is like ingrained into human culture. The fear
Speaker 1: of our own children come for us. And and as
Speaker 1: a father now I have to say I feel a
Speaker 1: lot of that, you know, I mean you when you
Speaker 1: have this strange creature becoming more and more human and
Speaker 1: your your life, you think about that you can't help
Speaker 1: but worry about about all the things that could go
Speaker 1: wrong um or or you know, all the problems that
Speaker 1: could arise. And so I definitely want to to drive
Speaker 1: home that that's in my mind the whole time. So
Speaker 1: I don't want anyone to come into this thinking that
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a real callous approach to it that
Speaker 1: we're all just about, you know, talking about horror movie
Speaker 1: tie ins for the topic, because obviously it's a very
Speaker 1: it's a very sensitive issue and if anyone out there
Speaker 1: who is planning to have children already has a child
Speaker 1: and watching that child developed, that this is something that
Speaker 1: could topic that could produce a fair amount of anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I also think to like from reading the literature,
Speaker 1: that there's a lot to be learned here too if
Speaker 1: you're a parent, right both about Uh, we're definitely going
Speaker 1: to be talking about nature, not versus nurture, but and
Speaker 1: nurture they're working together here, right, And there's things to
Speaker 1: look out for. But there's also ways techniques of parenting
Speaker 1: that work especially well, especially if you know, you think
Speaker 1: that your child may have the traits of being callous
Speaker 1: or unemotional in the way that we're going to describe
Speaker 1: here that subsequently lead to some of these attacks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I do want to say the original idea for this
Speaker 1: did come from our October marathon of doing things that
Speaker 1: were kind of related to Halloween, and it was just
Speaker 1: one of the things that I couldn't get in under
Speaker 1: the deadline. I was thinking about the premise of Michael
Speaker 1: Myers and the Halloween movies, which is that he was
Speaker 1: a kid who killed members of his family, was taken
Speaker 1: away to a mental asylum for that and when he
Speaker 1: was like nine years old or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and and then subsequently grew up escaped and you know
Speaker 1: it was a serial killer. Yeah, but he's just essentially
Speaker 1: a black hole of of emotion. Yeah. And so what
Speaker 1: I wanted to look into there was is that actually possible?
Speaker 1: Is Michael Meyer the the idea there of a child
Speaker 1: first of all of a and it's hard to find
Speaker 1: this under search term, but the term that's used clinically
Speaker 1: is juvenile homicidal offender because when you type in child killer,
Speaker 1: it usually is associated with people who kill children, not
Speaker 1: children who kill um. And so I was looking to see,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the likelihood of this actually happening. And
Speaker 1: then also, you know, in the case of the Michael
Speaker 1: Myers myth, what's the recidivism look like? So when these
Speaker 1: children are released as adults, you know, what what do
Speaker 1: their lives look like? Yeah? And ultimately we're also going
Speaker 1: to discuss the bright side and some of the treatment
Speaker 1: options that are becoming available that are showing promise because
Speaker 1: it's easy to get hung up on just the trope,
Speaker 1: right on the idea of the oh, this is a
Speaker 1: bad seed, this child is just a black hole of
Speaker 1: emotion and there's no altering that. But that's the myth
Speaker 1: and that's what the media loves to grab onto anytime
Speaker 1: we have one of these incidents happen, especially in the
Speaker 1: United States. And it's way more complex than that, right.
Speaker 1: The thing that's really interesting is, like you said, like
Speaker 1: as we study this further and further and understand the
Speaker 1: biology behind it, we also find it really interesting ways
Speaker 1: to treat it. So just to get out of the way.
Speaker 1: Some of the more common versions of the trope of
Speaker 1: the bad seat trope that we see, um, you have
Speaker 1: a Damien from the Omen, that's a big one, the
Speaker 1: kids from the Village of the Damned. Um, there's the
Speaker 1: Bad Seat itself, which was the ninety six theatrical film,
Speaker 1: uh and a TV movie. And five you have the
Speaker 1: good Son, you have the Ring. You have Peter Wiggin
Speaker 1: and or some Scott Cards enters game who like to
Speaker 1: torture animals and physically and mentally tormented siblings and the
Speaker 1: animals thing is real as well as we'll talk about
Speaker 1: there's a there's a murderous newborn in Ray Bradberry's short
Speaker 1: story Small Assassin. Uh, there's the young Tom Riddle and
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, of course. Uh, there's Aaliya and Dune. There's
Speaker 1: a Mordred to Shame and Stephen King's at Dark Towers series.
Speaker 1: You could probably count Stewie Griffin. Um. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: so we have this trope of this child that is
Speaker 1: just unredeemably bad, that that that is that is evil
Speaker 1: in a in some inhuman way, generally with some sort
Speaker 1: of magical scenario backing up whither that way. I think
Speaker 1: it's particularly helpful actually here to use Halloween and John
Speaker 1: Carpenter's vision for Michael Myers as what isn't happening? That's
Speaker 1: the fantastic version, right, and that John Carpenter is always
Speaker 1: referred to that character as the shape. Right. He's not human,
Speaker 1: it's he's not a product of upbringing or things, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: mental problems necessarily as much as it's just a body
Speaker 1: full of evil. Right now, Rob Zombies version that ultimately
Speaker 1: changes that in the remake, we don't really need to
Speaker 1: go down that Rabbit hole. But but I think that
Speaker 1: it's important to say that's not what's going on here
Speaker 1: with children who do kill, right, and and just to
Speaker 1: get it out of the way, psychopathy in general, like
Speaker 1: what is the psychopath? The psychopath demonstrates significantly reduced empathy
Speaker 1: with the feelings of others, uh, and supporting the theory
Speaker 1: that this uh, that this deficit makes it easier for
Speaker 1: them to inflict pain on victims their mirror neurons or
Speaker 1: two out of whack for them to feel their victims pain,
Speaker 1: making the most you know, cold blooded of homicides a
Speaker 1: little a little easier to to to commit. So it uh,
Speaker 1: it has to do with a lack of empathy and
Speaker 1: a callousness in nature. But it's it's a a neurological
Speaker 1: condition and certainly not some sort of supernatural occurrence. So
Speaker 1: let's get this out of the way to start off
Speaker 1: with and answer you know what my initial question was,
Speaker 1: which is really how likely are juvenile killers? And in fact, uh,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Department of Justice has plenty of statistics
Speaker 1: about this on their website, so you can go there
Speaker 1: and find this. But I'll share a couple of with
Speaker 1: you here that I think are important The first is
Speaker 1: that in so that's as far back currently as our
Speaker 1: our data shows. Uh, the known juvenile offenders that were
Speaker 1: involved were in six hundred and ten murders in the US,
Speaker 1: and so that sounds like a lot, I know, but
Speaker 1: that represents seven percent of all known murder offenders from
Speaker 1: that time, so it is relatively small. Actually. Also, as
Speaker 1: of the number of juvenile homicidal offenders is at its
Speaker 1: lowest level in thirty four years since we started tracking this,
Speaker 1: which is pretty wild. Uh. And in fact, I really
Speaker 1: recommend going to the to the Department of Justices site
Speaker 1: and looking at the charts that they have built out
Speaker 1: of this, because apparently the real spike for this was
Speaker 1: in the nineties, UH and ninety four were particularly bad,
Speaker 1: and you just see this huge spike. But we are
Speaker 1: right now, as we're recording this episode, at an all
Speaker 1: time low, or I guess all time in terms as
Speaker 1: long as they've been recording it. UH. Homicide offending also
Speaker 1: increases with age, so it's less likely that it's going
Speaker 1: to happen if you are, say, under fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: Only ten percent of the offenders were under fifteen, whereas
Speaker 1: seventies six of them were sixteen or seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: And in my mind when I was thinking about this,
Speaker 1: I was thinking more along the lines of like preteens, juveniles,
Speaker 1: like under thirteen. I guess, um, and that does happen,
Speaker 1: but it is again significantly small. In the Justice Department
Speaker 1: released information saying that twenty nine children under the age
Speaker 1: of fourteen, So this is more along the lines of
Speaker 1: what I was thinking had committed homicides that year. And uh.
Speaker 1: The other interesting thing is that the victims are more
Speaker 1: likely to be acquaintances. So as of data, thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent of them were acquaintances, while twenty percent of them
Speaker 1: were total strangers. So the idea of a young child
Speaker 1: going completely psycho and murdering a total stranger is rare
Speaker 1: and unlikely. Now, male juvenile homicide offenders varied substantially, but
Speaker 1: female juvenile homicide offenders have a steady rate um accounting
Speaker 1: for a very small share. Less than one hundred were
Speaker 1: implicated in homicide since two thousand two, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, of the eight thousand, five fourteen people arrested
Speaker 1: for murder in the US, only one was a girl
Speaker 1: under thirteen. In two thousand thirteen, the number was is
Speaker 1: to at its lowest since at least nineteen eighty and
Speaker 1: there is no evidence that homicide among young girls is increasing.
Speaker 1: And this is uh, I think important to note because
Speaker 1: as some of our listeners will probably have immediately come
Speaker 1: to mind, I believe it was in well it's related
Speaker 1: to the creepypasta episode. Yeah it was, I can't remember,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, two young girls who were fascinated
Speaker 1: with the creepy pasta stories about Slenderman tried to murder
Speaker 1: one of their peers. Uh, and we're unsuccessful. But that story,
Speaker 1: like you know, when for these stories pop up, scared
Speaker 1: a lot of people and made them think, oh my god. Uh,
Speaker 1: look at this, this evidence that young girls are becoming murderers,
Speaker 1: and in fact, that's not the case if you look
Speaker 1: at all the data. The other important thing to remember
Speaker 1: here to data wise, is that a lot of this
Speaker 1: activity happens in groups. Remember that I mentioned that it
Speaker 1: was two girls in the slender Man case. Wasn't just
Speaker 1: one girl on her own. About half of the number
Speaker 1: of homicides committed by known juvenile offenders as of involved
Speaker 1: multiple offenders, So that's important to realize. You know, children
Speaker 1: are more likely We've all been kids. And even if
Speaker 1: you're a child, if you're under fourteen listening to this
Speaker 1: show right now, you know you're more likely to do
Speaker 1: things that you together than you would alone. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I well, I know I did things that I regret
Speaker 1: that I have done on my own that I did
Speaker 1: with a group of friends. Yeah. So it's easy to
Speaker 1: imagine us in any variety of scenarios in which a
Speaker 1: younger individual is just roped into some sort of horrible
Speaker 1: situation with older children. Yeah. And you know, the kids
Speaker 1: can kind of ramp one another up in this exactly,
Speaker 1: it becomes reality through them talking, and then ultimately peer
Speaker 1: pressure leads to these risky choices. And many children don't
Speaker 1: even really understand what dead means. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the kids that are interviewed after they commit these murders,
Speaker 1: they don't understand that this is a permanent thing. They
Speaker 1: think of it as sort of being magical. Uh. So
Speaker 1: that's important to remember as well too, that there's a
Speaker 1: lack of understanding here of of the crime that's being committed.
Speaker 1: Uh And and lastly, before we get into the you know,
Speaker 1: the meat behind what's going on inside juvenile homicidal offenders.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that in June of the Miller
Speaker 1: versus Alabama case that was heard by the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: ultimately decided that juvenile murders did not have to serve
Speaker 1: their lives in jail for crimes. The tight decision was
Speaker 1: a five four decision in which they chose to ban
Speaker 1: mandatory life sentence says of life imprisonment for juvenile offenders.
Speaker 1: So now as as as of that, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a decision there can those who are convicted of these
Speaker 1: murders have a possibility of eventual freedom. This is in
Speaker 1: the US. Mind you that, you know, this stuff happens
Speaker 1: in other countries as we'll talk about as well, but
Speaker 1: you know, we're here in America. A lot of the
Speaker 1: research was done in America. So that's, you know, what
Speaker 1: I'm going to base our information off of. As of
Speaker 1: right now, the Supreme Court is waiting to hear Montgomery
Speaker 1: versus Alabama, which is another UH case that will basically
Speaker 1: see whether or not they can apply this retroactively, meaning
Speaker 1: that children who were in prison for life for murders
Speaker 1: before the twelve decision will eventually be able to be released. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and obviously it's It's such a tough situation to weigh
Speaker 1: in on because you you're ultimately dealing with adults and
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out how to treat this adult
Speaker 1: who in their youth, in their childhood even uh committed
Speaker 1: a fact but before they actually were fully formed as
Speaker 1: if an individual. So there's a few examples here that
Speaker 1: let's get out of the way of just you know,
Speaker 1: known cases where this has happened that have been popularized. One,
Speaker 1: obviously the you know Michael Myers being the inspiration for
Speaker 1: looking into this research, is a guy named Edmund Kemper.
Speaker 1: There's also a person who is known only as girl
Speaker 1: A in Japan. She was uh fourteen years old and
Speaker 1: killed in eleven year old in Japan in n and
Speaker 1: mounted his head outside their school. So when this happened,
Speaker 1: the country's parliament actually lowered the age of criminal responsibility
Speaker 1: from sixteen to fourteen. So you can see how these
Speaker 1: singular incidents, which are horrible, by the way, I get
Speaker 1: a lot of press coverage and then it becomes an
Speaker 1: issue for politicians to exact exactly. So we've seen just
Speaker 1: in the last you know, five minutes, how both Japan
Speaker 1: and the United States have changed their laws based on these.
Speaker 1: There's a slender man girls that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: And one thing I'd like to mentioned here just as
Speaker 1: an anecdote. I don't want to dive into that whole affair,
Speaker 1: but that one psychiatrists interviewed one of the children who
Speaker 1: was responsible. She said that she believes in unicorns, that
Speaker 1: she can communicate with Lord Voldemort and the teenage muntant
Speaker 1: Ninja turtles. And she also believes that she has the
Speaker 1: ability of vulcan mind control. So that helps you to
Speaker 1: kind of put into place here. This is a child
Speaker 1: who's fantasizing about things. I don't think that she quite
Speaker 1: understood what was going on. Yeah, I mean she this
Speaker 1: seems to illustrate a real inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one last example that I want to throw out there,
Speaker 1: especially because um one of our fans UH mentioned it
Speaker 1: on Facebook earlier this week, is Mary Flora bell Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty eight, she strangled two young boys when
Speaker 1: she was a child. She took a new name and
Speaker 1: started her life over when she was released from prison
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. I believe that she's British, UM,
Speaker 1: so that would explain why you know, she was released.
Speaker 1: She and her daughter she now has a daughter, were
Speaker 1: promised a lifetime of anonymity, and this is now referred
Speaker 1: to over there as a Mary Bell order. So basically,
Speaker 1: if you commit a crime as a child and they
Speaker 1: you know, deem that you're able to be released, you
Speaker 1: are and you can live your life in anonymity if
Speaker 1: you so choose so that you don't have to you know,
Speaker 1: have that hanging over your head. I guess now from
Speaker 1: from some of the readings I had about Mary Bell,
Speaker 1: apparently she was somehow involved in a book about her
Speaker 1: life and received money for it, and that somehow subsequently
Speaker 1: let her daughter know about her past actions. So there
Speaker 1: was a little bit of conflict there and a little
Speaker 1: bit of controversy about the fact that she was being
Speaker 1: paid to talk about these horrible acts that she had done.
Speaker 1: So obviously with as with any topic dealing with with childhood,
Speaker 1: this is a big there's a big discussion of nature
Speaker 1: and nurture here, like how much of this is genetics,
Speaker 1: how much of this is just uh, you know, tendencies
Speaker 1: that are going to be inherent in you as a person,
Speaker 1: and then how much of it is the nurturing. How
Speaker 1: much of it is is that the level of attention,
Speaker 1: the level of of of parental presence and parental guidance
Speaker 1: that are present there Where, Where does this behavior emerge from?
Speaker 1: And how can either side of the scenario curve it.
Speaker 1: There's a quote from a book about this that I
Speaker 1: want to use as sort of a guiding principle for
Speaker 1: us going forward. It's almost like a thesis statement of
Speaker 1: what I think that the data and research reveals. And
Speaker 1: it's by Deborah Niehoff. She's the author of a book
Speaker 1: called The Biology of Violence. And her quote is behavior
Speaker 1: is the result of a dialogue between your brain and
Speaker 1: your experiences. So it's not just your biology and it's
Speaker 1: not just your experiences. It's those two interacting together. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we you know, I remember, especially in school, often
Speaker 1: being told about the nature v. Nurture argument, you know,
Speaker 1: most like a Supreme Court Supreme Court case, which one
Speaker 1: is and it's both, especially in this situation. Um, So
Speaker 1: think about it this way. Childhood development essentially works like this.
Speaker 1: In our preteen and teenage years, both girls and boys
Speaker 1: develop intense social relationships. Especially when we're adolescence, we like
Speaker 1: to you know, become independent, and we feel everything really intensely. Right.
Speaker 1: What's going on there is that our prefrontal cortex, is
Speaker 1: the part of our brain that's in charge of critical thinking, judgment,
Speaker 1: and deliberation hasn't fully developed. In fact, like even when
Speaker 1: we're adolescence. You know, some of us like to think
Speaker 1: of when I was fifteen, I was basically an adult
Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know. I don't want to look
Speaker 1: back that I was an idiot. But uh uh, that's
Speaker 1: essentially what's going on. Our brains are still developing, so
Speaker 1: there's lots of room for how they develop, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the quotes about this from a researcher
Speaker 1: looking into it said, it's like they're in a muscle
Speaker 1: car without breaks. I like that analogy. That's that's what
Speaker 1: high school felt like for me. That sounds I mean,
Speaker 1: it's easy to forge it. Just how much is going
Speaker 1: on in the high school mind. Um, it seems like
Speaker 1: so high schoolers can seem so alien. Teenagers can see
Speaker 1: seems so alien, and in a sense they are like
Speaker 1: they're they're they're thinking and changing, uh, in some very
Speaker 1: dramatic ways. National Institute of Health Projects scanded over a
Speaker 1: hundred teen brains as well as some younger individuals and
Speaker 1: some older ones. And they found that as we grow,
Speaker 1: our brains undergo just massive reorganization between our twelfth and
Speaker 1: twenty five year That's crazy to think, like, even up
Speaker 1: until twenty five, we are still maturing and developing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and my I look back and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that totally totally at least being older than now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can definitely look back. I remember being twenty five though,
Speaker 1: and thinking like I got this under control, totally didn't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've seen it described as a slow wave. Uh. And
Speaker 1: subsequent imaging work has has shown that these the physical changes,
Speaker 1: they all start in the brain's rear and they moved
Speaker 1: towards the front from areas close to the brain. Still
Speaker 1: that that look after older, you know, more basic primal functions, uh.
Speaker 1: And then move forward through our our ability to process
Speaker 1: all that stimuli. And then during this period two you see, um,
Speaker 1: you see this idea that that the teenage brain also
Speaker 1: is going to be super obsessed with making social connections
Speaker 1: with other individuals. Um. And I've seen this argued is
Speaker 1: kind of an evolutionary advantage to where the teen is
Speaker 1: has evolved to leave um it's family and find a
Speaker 1: home with new people. And therefore the brain is looking
Speaker 1: for that example, and it's willing to take more risks
Speaker 1: in order to carry it out. This brain development is
Speaker 1: definitely something that I have to wonder if it's more
Speaker 1: recent for humanity in that like that we're developing up
Speaker 1: until the age of I mean that somewhat makes sense
Speaker 1: for us now, and that like we don't in our
Speaker 1: current culture in America, we don't consider ourselves quote adult
Speaker 1: until we're eighteen, right, but like uh, responsibilities of children
Speaker 1: in much earlier ages, even just going back to the
Speaker 1: medieval age, we're so much earlier. You know, I wonder
Speaker 1: if over time that there was a gradual progression of
Speaker 1: getting to this point where the brain was allowed to
Speaker 1: develop more and more and more as we got older,
Speaker 1: or you know, you can think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of something like a butterfly. All the stages that take
Speaker 1: place in order to reach that point where a butterfly
Speaker 1: is just around to to breed and do its thing
Speaker 1: and die. So you could say that really past twenty
Speaker 1: five or not too much past twenty five is just
Speaker 1: kind of extra time. Uh, just the you know, the
Speaker 1: landingstrip everything we got after. That's why after twenty five
Speaker 1: you're like a village elder. Yeah. Yes, that's scary, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean the bottom line is that, yeah, a
Speaker 1: ton of of of mental development takes place during this
Speaker 1: time span. And uh and the brain of the child,
Speaker 1: the brain of the team even know on up in
Speaker 1: year old, is a different beast than the adult brain. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So let's get into psychopathy then, specifically in kids, right,
Speaker 1: So right up front, I want to distinguish like psychopathy
Speaker 1: and being psychotic are two totally different things. We are
Speaker 1: talking about psychopathy and psychopaths today, and there's also those
Speaker 1: are basically the same thing as sociopathy, right, So when
Speaker 1: these terms are thrown around, it's important to remember that
Speaker 1: that there's there's a difference here. But so it gets
Speaker 1: back to what we were talking about earlier. They referred
Speaker 1: to in some corners as see you kids, right because
Speaker 1: their callous and unemotional. H they show a little empathy
Speaker 1: for others or remorse for their own actions, and like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, they're prone to violence. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: c U thing I think is important to when it
Speaker 1: comes to labeling, so that in the treatment of these
Speaker 1: children who have something other than psychopath to throw around,
Speaker 1: which is such a loaded, superloaded and it's especially uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just to have to be a parent and
Speaker 1: to have that term applied to your kid is terrifying,
Speaker 1: not only because of you know, the implications, but also
Speaker 1: because that is a label that is going to determine
Speaker 1: the outcome of their life. And I think the research
Speaker 1: is showing more and more that psychopathy is it's not
Speaker 1: that that situation where oh, this this child has the
Speaker 1: mark and this one present, but rather they're varying levels.
Speaker 1: There's a spectrum upon which vast majority of people are
Speaker 1: going to pop up in a lot of ways. I
Speaker 1: saw it compared in the literature to both autism and
Speaker 1: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and not that there are similar
Speaker 1: things going on in the brain, in fact, they're not,
Speaker 1: but but that, like you said, there's gradations, uh, and
Speaker 1: there's different ways in which that affects the person's ability
Speaker 1: to interact with their community, right. Uh. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, there are also different and growing ways to
Speaker 1: treat and uh, not cure necessarily, don't think that's the
Speaker 1: right word, but to to help these children grow out
Speaker 1: of it, right, So how do they figure that out.
Speaker 1: They've got a couple of different tools that are essentially
Speaker 1: tests that they give them. One is the Inventory of
Speaker 1: Callous Unemotional Traits. I really wish we had access to
Speaker 1: one of these, uh we could have taken before the beast,
Speaker 1: because I I have to wonder if I where I
Speaker 1: would uh score on these. The other is the Child
Speaker 1: Psychopathy Scale, and then they use a modified version of
Speaker 1: a test for adults. It's called the Antisocial Process Screening Device.
Speaker 1: So all these are various, i think written in oral
Speaker 1: tests that essentially tell psychologists, you know, kind of where
Speaker 1: on the spectrum these children fall. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: crazy statistic right here. A recent estimate by the neuroscientist
Speaker 1: Kent Keel placed the national cost of psychopathy this is
Speaker 1: in the US at four hundred and sixty billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year. That's ten times the cost of depression. And
Speaker 1: the reason why is because in part, psychopaths tend to
Speaker 1: be arrested repeatedly, So that leads us to you know,
Speaker 1: we're jumping ahead a little bit, but that insinuates that
Speaker 1: there's a bit of recidivism that goes on here. So
Speaker 1: setting Aside the examples you've seen in movies and whatnot,
Speaker 1: here's some actual examples of this kind of behavior one
Speaker 1: might encounter with with cu kids. So cows and emotional
Speaker 1: children tend to be highly manipulated. Um. And again this
Speaker 1: is this is one of those situations where you can
Speaker 1: look at any child and you can see levels of manipulation.
Speaker 1: So it's it's easy to get carried away in uh
Speaker 1: in diagnosing the children in your life, trying to get
Speaker 1: that cookie right, kind of manipulate a parent into letting
Speaker 1: them do this or that. Yeah. And I would imagine
Speaker 1: too that there are times, not being a parent myself,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine there are times when you are
Speaker 1: a parent that your patients is running thin, and you
Speaker 1: might be more prone to just say, wait a minute, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta get this little psychopath to me a psycho path. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you kids also may lie frequently, uh not, just
Speaker 1: to avoid punishment, as all children will. That's important to
Speaker 1: distinguish or to just get out of brushing their teeth.
Speaker 1: Your kids lie, Yeah, It's like it's like something out
Speaker 1: of the wire, like all children lie. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the power of discovering the lie, you know, the almost
Speaker 1: magical nature of it. You can say a thing and
Speaker 1: in doing so kind of make it true. Like that's
Speaker 1: big magic, even as an adult and as a kid
Speaker 1: all the more. But with see you children, there's going
Speaker 1: to be more likelihood that they're just gonna lie for
Speaker 1: the sake of line for no reason. Um, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see poor impulse control and I should probably just go
Speaker 1: ahead drive home. The impulse control is something that that
Speaker 1: you see sort of gradually come online as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna vary from child the child, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the younger the child, the less impulse control. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then as they can fell up, it's going to improve.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, by generally by age fifteen, Um,
Speaker 1: a an individual taking an impulse control test are going
Speaker 1: to be able to do as well um as as
Speaker 1: an adult about of the time. Um, if they're applying
Speaker 1: themselves and you know and thinking about it. Um. But
Speaker 1: with with see you kids in particularly poor impulse control, also,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see see that they're unrepentant in their behavior.
Speaker 1: They're they're not gonna you know, cave and say they're
Speaker 1: sorry about something. And like adult psychopaths, they can seem
Speaker 1: to lack humanity for you know, for to an outside observer,
Speaker 1: they might they might seem like that Michael Myers kid. Um.
Speaker 1: But of course there's a lot more going on. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So I'd like to add here before we go on
Speaker 1: that a really great piece that we found for the
Speaker 1: literature for this episode was in the New York Times
Speaker 1: magazine actually, and it was published in the article is
Speaker 1: called can you Kill Sorry? And you call a nine
Speaker 1: year old psychopath? And I posted it to our Facebook
Speaker 1: page this week, but you can easily google that if
Speaker 1: you want a really fascinating long form read that this
Speaker 1: journalist embedded herself in a family with a child I
Speaker 1: can't remember how old he was, but who was diagnosed
Speaker 1: as being see you, potentially a psychopath and was actually
Speaker 1: attending a I don't know what school isn't the right word.
Speaker 1: It was like a center. It was more of a
Speaker 1: like a summer camp program, a summer program, it was
Speaker 1: kind of it was an offshoot of a program aimed
Speaker 1: at children with autism, and this was in this branch
Speaker 1: of the camp was aimed at children see you kids. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the piece and we're discussing here is excellent, Uh, and
Speaker 1: it really puts a human face on absolutely, it goes,
Speaker 1: it goes very in depth into the experiences of this
Speaker 1: child's mother and father, uh and and also his siblings
Speaker 1: as well as well as into the data and talking
Speaker 1: to psychologists. I just I was very impressed with the
Speaker 1: work in there. Yeah. Incidentally that the camp that we're
Speaker 1: talking about was held by a Florida International University. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And speaking of the heredity of the kid, we kind
Speaker 1: of come back to the nature side of it here
Speaker 1: and heredity, the heridability of callous and emotional traits might
Speaker 1: be as high as eight percent and if and from
Speaker 1: that piece, what I remember is they spoke to his
Speaker 1: father and the father said, Yeah, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I also had social issues. I also was unemotional and unresponsive,
Speaker 1: but I grew out of it. Yeah. And in the
Speaker 1: piece they also quote to produce psychologist Donald Line them
Speaker 1: and he points out that it's no higher than the
Speaker 1: Herida heritability for anxiety and depression, and both of those
Speaker 1: conditions have large genetic risk factors, but of course we
Speaker 1: can we can treat them. And so the idea, the
Speaker 1: idea here is that there's there's a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of hope and a lot of data that supports
Speaker 1: the notion that this is treatable as well. This is
Speaker 1: not um, you know, cosmic black mark on an individual
Speaker 1: that can't be addressed. Right, absolutely, even though it sounds
Speaker 1: like it. Again, I think there's a stigma attached to
Speaker 1: the word psychopath, right Um. In fact, I almost think
Speaker 1: that it would benefits psychology to come up with a
Speaker 1: different term. And maybe that's why they use see you kids.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, definitely, um, because because it doesn't cling
Speaker 1: to this kind of outdated notion that you know, that
Speaker 1: it can't be treated, that it can't be cured. And
Speaker 1: we're seeing more and more research that shows that yes,
Speaker 1: there are ways there, there are treatments that can work
Speaker 1: with adults, even to um to bring some level of
Speaker 1: compassion online. Whereas the term psychopath implies culturally, this child
Speaker 1: is evil, nothing will do anything about it. Well, and
Speaker 1: so we talked about how it's assessed, but you know,
Speaker 1: I threw out those tests earlier. But in fact, there's
Speaker 1: no standard way to just figure this out. Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: some psychologists believe that it's a distinct neural logical condition, uh,
Speaker 1: and that you know, maybe we'd be able to identify
Speaker 1: it and children as young as five years old. But
Speaker 1: it's difficult, right, especially because their brains are still developing,
Speaker 1: and because normal behavior at these ages can sometimes be
Speaker 1: misinterpreted as psychopathic. I could totally see that. My my
Speaker 1: interactions with under five year olds is limited. But you
Speaker 1: have quite a few. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I say,
Speaker 1: there there are days when you think of they're all
Speaker 1: complete psychopaths, but really, yeah, they're they're kids sor right.
Speaker 1: While you may have a genetic disposition for these behaviors,
Speaker 1: childhood trauma and a lack of connection with other people
Speaker 1: helps bring them out. Okay, So this is the nurture
Speaker 1: side of the angle. This is the experiences side of it.
Speaker 1: So psychologists try to work on intervention with kids who
Speaker 1: have early signs of psychopathy so that they can prevent
Speaker 1: those experiences from exacerbating it. So, yeah, we think that
Speaker 1: there's a genetic component that's involved. You're in antisocial personality disorders,
Speaker 1: but depending on how we grow up that can either
Speaker 1: exaggerate those problems or help us straighten them out. That
Speaker 1: that's the terminology that that some people use straighten it out.
Speaker 1: I think the idea was that sort of like a
Speaker 1: rubber band right in adults. Real life psychopathy doesn't always
Speaker 1: lead to violence either too, so that's important to distinguish.
Speaker 1: Some successful members of society would be deemed psychopaths if
Speaker 1: they were assessed by a clinician. In fact, this reminds
Speaker 1: me our colleagues that stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Did a video one time on I believe it was
Speaker 1: on corporate CEOs and the psychopathy scale and where they
Speaker 1: would fall on it, and in a lot of times
Speaker 1: I believe the thesis of their video, who is that? Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: those who tend to be successful also tend to be
Speaker 1: to rate as psychopaths. It reminds me of the study
Speaker 1: that we were talking about in our episode on the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prizes about CEOs who had experienced disastrous natural disasters
Speaker 1: where um, where there were fatal incidents and those who
Speaker 1: hadn't uh seen those repercussions were more likely to take risk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you have the idea that the CEO themselves is
Speaker 1: a psychopath. The I think, of course, studies would say
Speaker 1: that a company as a whole is essentially a psychopath,
Speaker 1: and it's it's policies and it's treated as a person
Speaker 1: as treated as a person and U. Yeah, And on
Speaker 1: top of that, I feel like that the more you
Speaker 1: read about actual psychopathic traits and and and how actual
Speaker 1: sociopaths function, you begin to just see more and more
Speaker 1: of them around you in your tailor life. Yeah. Absolutely. Um.
Speaker 1: And and here's the thing too, especially if you're a parent.
Speaker 1: So some parenting can actually make child psychopathy worse. And
Speaker 1: it depends on how you're parenting, right, So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some psychologists say that by punishing your child for behaving
Speaker 1: violently or callous lee, that actually leads the child to
Speaker 1: acting out in even more extreme ways. And in that
Speaker 1: New York Times article certainly saw that with the child
Speaker 1: that was the case study there. But there's therapies for
Speaker 1: intervention and therapies that can kind of help parents out too, uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes starting as young as when the child is two
Speaker 1: years old, which kind of blows my mind because I
Speaker 1: can't imagine being able to diagnose a two year old
Speaker 1: with this. But it is very difficult to identify, not
Speaker 1: just in at risk children, but especially because they haven't
Speaker 1: started socializing yet, right, So it's only up until they
Speaker 1: start socializing that you're gonna start seeing the callousness and
Speaker 1: the unresponsiveness. UM. And also, like as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: kids with autism or a d h D maybe similarly antisocial,
Speaker 1: but that's a whole totally different kind of brain structure.
Speaker 1: So there's screening tests, there's the oral and written tests
Speaker 1: that we talked about, uh, and they'll help a clinician
Speaker 1: identify psychopathy, but there's still a lot of complications involved.
Speaker 1: And lastly, I just say that parents who are withdrawn
Speaker 1: or remote are also risking shaping a child shuts down emotionally.
Speaker 1: And this is difficult when you think about the hereditary aspect, right,
Speaker 1: because if a parent had some unemotional, potentially callous behaviors
Speaker 1: in their nature, then it's going to be even more
Speaker 1: difficult for them to be interactive and not shut down
Speaker 1: emotionally with your children. Right. So it's sort of a
Speaker 1: you know, this is a silly term, but it's a
Speaker 1: vicious cycle. Yeah. I mean because if the if the
Speaker 1: nature is already skewing psychopathic, uh, then the nurture is
Speaker 1: likely going to as well from the parent contributing to
Speaker 1: those genes. Yeah. So uh, in the same way that
Speaker 1: punishment can contribute to it. And neglect can also contribute
Speaker 1: to it that it can actually impair cortex development. And
Speaker 1: this is the stuff that controls the feelings or belonging
Speaker 1: an attachment in our brains. And that is a perfect
Speaker 1: segue into talking about brain anatomy. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We'll be right back. All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So according to m R I scan, psychopaths tend to
Speaker 1: have smaller sub genial cortex, five percent reduction in brain
Speaker 1: density and parts of the paralympic system that's where empathy
Speaker 1: and social values and moral decision making takes place. And
Speaker 1: this includes the orbitofrontal cortex UH and the call date.
Speaker 1: These are all critical for reinforcing positive outcomes and discouraging
Speaker 1: negative outcomes. So this gets down to just the basic
Speaker 1: uh principles of why do I behave the way that
Speaker 1: I behave? What's what's encouraging me to do the right
Speaker 1: thing and feel responsible from actions? Yeah, it really made
Speaker 1: me consider, huh, like I wonder what the shape of
Speaker 1: my brain is and how it's contributing to my behaviors
Speaker 1: and characteristics and things like that. It's it's not something
Speaker 1: that we usually is human beings going to back up
Speaker 1: and think about you know, it's difficult to do right
Speaker 1: viewed into that whole blind brain idea that the brain
Speaker 1: can't really perceive itself and we're trying to two. We
Speaker 1: can't stand on the outside of self and look in uh,
Speaker 1: so we have this kind of backdoor mirror way of
Speaker 1: trying yeah, yeah, which is often distorted. So there's one
Speaker 1: really great study that I think contributes to the dialogue
Speaker 1: about children with psychopathy, specifically juvenile homicidal offenders and how
Speaker 1: the biology is working here. And this came out in
Speaker 1: It was published in NeuroImage Clinical volume four, and the
Speaker 1: article has a ton of authors, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to list them all, but it was called Abnormal Brain
Speaker 1: Structure and Youth who commit Homicide. So essentially, this group
Speaker 1: of researchers looked at young incarcerated homicidal offenders uh and
Speaker 1: they found that they have reduced gray matter volumes in
Speaker 1: their medial and lateral temporal lobes, including the hippocampus and
Speaker 1: the posteer insula. And this is relative to compared youth
Speaker 1: who are not homicidal offenders. So from this we know
Speaker 1: that their brains are shaped differently and they have less
Speaker 1: gray matter. That's the essential discovery here. The growing research
Speaker 1: indicates that the temporal polls are responsible, that these are
Speaker 1: the areas where there is less gray matter for social
Speaker 1: and emotional processing. And this included detecting deception and moral
Speaker 1: decision making, as well as inferring the emotional states of others.
Speaker 1: So that makes sense in terms of thinking about the
Speaker 1: traits of psychopathy that we talked about earlier. So these
Speaker 1: are the regions of your brain that cover critical cognitive
Speaker 1: control and emotion. And they cited some other studies here too.
Speaker 1: One was that mail youth with conduct disorder had reduced
Speaker 1: gray matter in their left amygdala and interior insula compared
Speaker 1: to the healthy control subset, and these reductions were related
Speaker 1: to aggressive behaviors. And yet another study adolescent males with
Speaker 1: conduct disorder had reduced gray matter in the left orbital
Speaker 1: frontal cortex and bilateral temporal lobes, as well as the
Speaker 1: left amygdala and the hippocampus. So all of this together
Speaker 1: is kind of saying, all right, they had previously looked
Speaker 1: at boys with conduct disorder. They had looked at, um,
Speaker 1: you know what kind of gray matter they were missing,
Speaker 1: And they said, well, wait a minute, conduct disorder seems
Speaker 1: to be connected to homicidal incidents with juveniles, Is the
Speaker 1: same thing going on there? And yes it is. It's
Speaker 1: less gray matter, it's just in different parts of the
Speaker 1: brain essentially. So in this specific study, the way that
Speaker 1: they analyzed the brain structure was they took youth who
Speaker 1: committed homicides and they did m R I scans on them,
Speaker 1: and they introduced the following variables into their data set.
Speaker 1: They added their i Q, their age at the time
Speaker 1: of scan, the number of traumatic brain injuries they had
Speaker 1: received with a loss of consciousness. They used a test
Speaker 1: for psychopathy called the Hair Psychopathy Test List, and they
Speaker 1: used the quote youth version. I guess there's separate versions
Speaker 1: depending on how old you are, whether or not these
Speaker 1: kids had substance dependences, the years of regular substance abuse
Speaker 1: that they had, and what their psychiatric diagnoses and violent,
Speaker 1: non violent drug and total other convictions were. So all
Speaker 1: of these things combined right now. Like I said, prior
Speaker 1: work showed that there was reduced temporal pole gray matter
Speaker 1: that was related to psychopathic traits. But the interesting thing
Speaker 1: in this particular study is that the homicide group and
Speaker 1: the non homicides subsample did not differ in psychopathic traits
Speaker 1: per the scores that they took on that test there
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier, the psychopathy, the hair psychopathy youth version.
Speaker 1: So they, the authors of the studies say there is
Speaker 1: no observation that can be made that psychopathy is involved here. Right,
Speaker 1: We can't we can't say that. What we can say
Speaker 1: is that juveniles who commit murder have less of the
Speaker 1: gray matter. Okay, so yeah, it becomes the increasingly more
Speaker 1: difficult to try and say this, this is the brain
Speaker 1: of a homicidal young offender. This it's far more complicated
Speaker 1: than me. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, uh And but here's the
Speaker 1: good news. Other research has shown that our gray matter
Speaker 1: is malleable. Right, So one study shows that fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: of daily mirror reading for two weeks can increase the
Speaker 1: dorsolateral occipital gray matter. That's fascinating to me that just
Speaker 1: by doing that you can change the shape of your
Speaker 1: brain or the volume of Yeah. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: through cognitive training like this or possibly you know, uh,
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical interventions or therapy or other types of behavior modification,
Speaker 1: that you can help these kids to develop out of
Speaker 1: these behaviors that could potentially lead to them killing someone. Now,
Speaker 1: there does seem to be a link between low levels
Speaker 1: of cortisol and below normal function of the amygdala. That's
Speaker 1: the part of our brains the processes fear and shame.
Speaker 1: So usually we want to avoid these sensations, and that
Speaker 1: plays a big role in our behavioral motivation. So it
Speaker 1: gets down at route to just how our brains function
Speaker 1: uh in the in the face of fear and shame,
Speaker 1: and how how much of our behavior is aimed at
Speaker 1: avoiding those sensations. So when researchers have looked specifically at
Speaker 1: areas of the brain that are associated with fear and empathy,
Speaker 1: they found a couple of things. Sheila Hodgkins or Hodgens,
Speaker 1: she's a professor of psychology at the University of Montreal.
Speaker 1: She conducted experiments. You know, a lot of this comes
Speaker 1: down to basically m r I scans uh. And in
Speaker 1: this case, she did MRI I scans on adult psychopaths.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that they are homicidal offenders. Uh, And
Speaker 1: she found that even if they're non violent, their brains
Speaker 1: are different. UH. They have abnormal connections between their posterior
Speaker 1: singulate and the insular cortex. Similar structures were found in
Speaker 1: preteon preteen boys with callous unemotional dates. So I believe
Speaker 1: that that's referring to those other studies before, the one
Speaker 1: looking specifically at juvenile homicidal offenders. Um. But these brains are,
Speaker 1: like we said, they're malleable, they're highly plastic. Uh, kids
Speaker 1: can grow out of these Remember what we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. I mean, we're our brains are developing until
Speaker 1: we're twenty five years old. Like, this is something we
Speaker 1: we can take action. Yeah, it's it's worth remembering that
Speaker 1: in a Clockwork Orange, Alex essentially grows out of his
Speaker 1: behavior in the Yeah, I think they left that last
Speaker 1: chapter out of the movie. But getting so, okay, we're
Speaker 1: talking a lot about the brain part here, right, but
Speaker 1: let's remember that there's the nurture part as well. So. Uh,
Speaker 1: young brains, especially those from zero to three years old,
Speaker 1: are especially vulnerable to hurt. Right, And that's you know,
Speaker 1: probably part of why culturally we're so averse to the
Speaker 1: idea of anybody hurting Uh an infant or a toddler, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: So children who suffer physical abuse, stress, neglect, or terror
Speaker 1: can absolutely have changes in their brains. From this, the
Speaker 1: flood of stress chemicals resets how the brain is triggered
Speaker 1: during fight or flight situations. Right, So in some cases
Speaker 1: they'll be triggered too much, in some cases they won't
Speaker 1: be triggered at all. Uh, it can lead to impulsive aggression.
Speaker 1: So yeah, not abusive parents can lead to youth violence.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, right, especially given like I guess, our
Speaker 1: world experience. But also remember it's not just abusive parents
Speaker 1: doing this. It's also that there's there's something going on
Speaker 1: with the brain ahead of time that contributes. And it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that the conditions that we mentioned there
Speaker 1: can often line up, unfortunately with institutionalized care in the
Speaker 1: form of orphanages, So that's also a factor to take
Speaker 1: into account here. And so you know, on the other
Speaker 1: end of that, it could lead to antisocial personalities when
Speaker 1: the brain system of stress has just become totally unresponsive.
Speaker 1: So typically these kind of kids, and I think this
Speaker 1: is the uh c U type kids, they have low
Speaker 1: heart rates, uh, they have impaired emotional sensitivity. Right. In fact,
Speaker 1: Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans,
Speaker 1: has studied the risk factors for psychopathy and children for
Speaker 1: twenty years. And he described one boy who used a
Speaker 1: knife to cut off the tail of their family cat,
Speaker 1: bit by bit over a period of weeks. This is
Speaker 1: from that New York Times article. In fact, the parents
Speaker 1: didn't even notice. It took them quite a long time
Speaker 1: because it was so small. I don't think the cat
Speaker 1: was like, uh, in pain and letting them know, or
Speaker 1: bleeding or something like that. Um. But this gets back
Speaker 1: to kind of what we insinuated earlier, is that a
Speaker 1: common symptom in these traits of see you kids is
Speaker 1: that they will abuse animals. Yeah, and of course it's
Speaker 1: important to note to that some level of like if
Speaker 1: your child hits the cat or steps on a bug,
Speaker 1: a certain level of this is just a natural way
Speaker 1: in which a child figures out how pain works, how
Speaker 1: the limits of its body and its powers to impact
Speaker 1: it's in environmental surroundings, how all of that functions. So,
Speaker 1: so don't freak out if you listen to this and
Speaker 1: then you you catch a child slapping at the cat.
Speaker 1: You know out there you can make judgments about a
Speaker 1: childhood me. Uh, but I believe I was like maybe
Speaker 1: three or four years old, and I took the family
Speaker 1: cat and put him inside my toy chest and just
Speaker 1: closed him in there. I mean it was a big chest.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a tiny thing. But I didn't understand.
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh, he goes in here now
Speaker 1: with the toys, and uh my, my parents are like,
Speaker 1: where's the cat, and they find the cat in there,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, I just didn't. I didn't get it,
Speaker 1: you know. I I would hesitate to say that at
Speaker 1: any point I've been callous or unemotional in my life.
Speaker 1: That's probably the opposite. Uh See, we've curved a lot
Speaker 1: of that by just having a largely callous in an
Speaker 1: emotional cat. So oh yeah, that's perfect. So she lashes
Speaker 1: out against our sign and then just bats him occasionally.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that's how my cat treats my dog. But
Speaker 1: so okay, to be serious about this, Without unconditional love,
Speaker 1: children can fail to develop the right neural circuits that
Speaker 1: control their capability to feel or form healthy relationships. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in particular, this makes them especially hyper sensitive to
Speaker 1: perceived injustice uh and also often accompanied by when they're
Speaker 1: feeling powerless as well. So we saw that in the
Speaker 1: New York Times article. There was a lot of examples
Speaker 1: of this with the child Michael that was the case
Speaker 1: study in which he perceived an injustice against himself and
Speaker 1: he perceived powerlessness, and so he would lash out against
Speaker 1: his siblings or he'd lash out against his parents. Are
Speaker 1: other kids in the program that he was in. Now,
Speaker 1: there's some other brain pathologies that can lead to violence
Speaker 1: as well. Lesions of the frontal lobe can induce apathy
Speaker 1: and distort judgment and emotion. The singulate gyrus that curves
Speaker 1: through the center of the brain is hyperactive in murders
Speaker 1: and it just shifts from one thought to another. When
Speaker 1: it becomes impaired, people get stuck on one thought comes
Speaker 1: in the obsession. The prefrontal cortex is sluggish in murderers
Speaker 1: as well, and these damages to the brain can result
Speaker 1: from head trauma as well as exposure to toxic substances
Speaker 1: like like alcohol, even during the gestation. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: think that what we've established up to this point is
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of evidence that damage to the brain,
Speaker 1: however it occurs, can contribute to this, but that also
Speaker 1: experiences in childhood can also contribute not only to your behaviors,
Speaker 1: but how your brain is formed. Yeah, the the human
Speaker 1: mind is a nature nurture cocktail and a rather complicated
Speaker 1: recipe at that there are a number of things that
Speaker 1: can throw it off whack. And even if it's off whack,
Speaker 1: even if the drink recipe is a little different, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's not drinkable. That doesn't mean it can
Speaker 1: fully function within society. So now let's let's get to
Speaker 1: the third part of the question that I wanted to
Speaker 1: answer when we started out on this, which is how
Speaker 1: likely is juvenile homicide recidivism? Right? Remember we were talking
Speaker 1: at the beginning about that girl uh In in Britain
Speaker 1: who had committed murder as a young child in sixties
Speaker 1: and then was released and was anonymous Mary Bell and
Speaker 1: had a child. In fact, I think she's a grandmother. Now, um,
Speaker 1: how how likely is it? You know, in her case
Speaker 1: she didn't recede, But what about other children? Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this is really hard to predict. In fact, the fourteen
Speaker 1: national report from the National Center for Juvenile Justice in
Speaker 1: the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention says that
Speaker 1: there is no national recipivism rate for juveniles. The reason
Speaker 1: why is that each state has a very different juvenile
Speaker 1: justice system that differs in organization, administration, and data capacity,
Speaker 1: So we can't pull all this data together and make
Speaker 1: national judgments on it, is essentially what they're saying. UH.
Speaker 1: And in fact, eleven states in the United States don't
Speaker 1: even report data on juvenile offenders, so it's really difficult
Speaker 1: to make any kind of you know, judgment call in
Speaker 1: the United States. But what about other countries. Well, there
Speaker 1: is a study out of the Netherlands that indicated that
Speaker 1: male juvenile homicidal offenders and those in particular that maintain
Speaker 1: relationships with delinquents are at a greater risk for reoffending.
Speaker 1: So it is possible. Uh, that is a very different
Speaker 1: subsample that's just in the Netherlands, but in that particular study,
Speaker 1: they did find that they're at a high rate for recidivism.
Speaker 1: So another thing that came out of this New York
Speaker 1: Times study was a really interesting UH look into a
Speaker 1: researcher named Lee Robbins. He was a psychiatry researcher, and
Speaker 1: he conducted a series of studies on children who had
Speaker 1: behavioral problems and followed them into adulthood. UH, and his
Speaker 1: studies revealed two things. The first was that nearly every
Speaker 1: psychopathic a alt was deeply antisocial as a child. The
Speaker 1: second was that almost fifty percent of the children who
Speaker 1: scored high on measures of antisocial qualities did not go
Speaker 1: on to become psychopathic adults. So, in other words, they
Speaker 1: were necessary, but not sufficient in predicting who ultimately would
Speaker 1: become a violent criminal. So that's good to know. So
Speaker 1: these tests don't necessarily indicate if your child and you
Speaker 1: score high on them, that you're going to grow up
Speaker 1: and become a violent criminal, right, because growing up is key.
Speaker 1: There's still so much growing up, so much development to come.
Speaker 1: This is not the finished product, all the experiences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even again, like I keep coming back to that
Speaker 1: we're maturing. Our brain is maturing until we're twenty five
Speaker 1: years old. That you know, in my experience, that's you
Speaker 1: get seven years out of high school where your brain
Speaker 1: is still maturing based on whatever experiences you have there. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean, just it forces you certainly to to reevaluate
Speaker 1: your own life up till and maybe make you a
Speaker 1: little more compassionate towards the the teenagers in your midst. Now,
Speaker 1: I think I understand why in America you have to
Speaker 1: be twenty five before you can rent a car. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would make sense giving only full form your organisms.
Speaker 1: So one of the big questions of course here is
Speaker 1: yet what extent is it treatable? So the big hope here,
Speaker 1: and there's some good evidence to back this up, is
Speaker 1: that there's still a capacity for empathy uh and it
Speaker 1: controlled by specific parts of the brain. Is still exist
Speaker 1: in a weakened state, and then they can be strengthened,
Speaker 1: especially if we act early enough to we rewire the
Speaker 1: developing brain. And this UM, this brings to mind a
Speaker 1: couple of studies that I've I've looked at in the past.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand thirteen both were two thousand thirteen studies.
Speaker 1: Actually one was published in Frontiers and Human Neuroscience and
Speaker 1: the O there's a study from the Social Brain Lab
Speaker 1: and of the University Medical Center in uh Growningen uh
Speaker 1: and these looked at psychopathic inmates adults, UH and it
Speaker 1: looked a treatment opportunity. So the one NUTS and front
Speaker 1: Ears and Human Neuroscience that I mentioned, they used f
Speaker 1: m r I scans the brains add twenty one medium
Speaker 1: security prison inmates during the viewing of painful visual stimuli
Speaker 1: stub toes, smashed fingers, that sort of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that makes you go out. The
Speaker 1: researchers then asked the stubdies to imagine the pain happening
Speaker 1: to themselves as well as to others. The results will.
Speaker 1: When highly psychopathic subjects imagine the pain happening to themselves,
Speaker 1: brain regions involved in empathy for pain lit up like
Speaker 1: normal in their minds. But when they but when they
Speaker 1: imagine the pain inflicted on others, the same regions failed
Speaker 1: to activate. And this lines up with that with that
Speaker 1: two thirteen study from the Social Brain Lab that they're
Speaker 1: finding suggested that to pay the psychopaths, empathic abilities didn't
Speaker 1: kick in automatically, but could be turned on by conscious will,
Speaker 1: by exercise, by repetition. So both of these studies, it's essentially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a muscle. Think of it is
Speaker 1: a muscle that needs to be strengthened as a default
Speaker 1: setting that is off rather than on, and there has
Speaker 1: to be a little more conscious will and just requires
Speaker 1: a little training and moments. Yeah. Yeah, they seem to
Speaker 1: suggest that these sort of treatments, these mirror treatments, these
Speaker 1: empathy treatments UH are going to show a lot of
Speaker 1: promise with the individuals of varying ages the equipment there,
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of making sure that it's turning on.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's go back to where we started here.
Speaker 1: We had three questions. The first was how likely our
Speaker 1: juvenile homicidal offenders? How likely is it that there's that
Speaker 1: children will kill people? And the answer is not very Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty slim. They're blown out in the media
Speaker 1: and in our sort of cultural mythology, but realistically speaking,
Speaker 1: slim chance. Yeah. And then the second question would be, well,
Speaker 1: why is this happening? Why do they do this? And
Speaker 1: the answer is that it's a very complicated mixture of
Speaker 1: nature and nurture, right, brain act of it, as well
Speaker 1: as their experiences and their interaction with their families and peers. Right.
Speaker 1: And then the third question was, well, how likely is
Speaker 1: it that the very small amount of them UH that
Speaker 1: do commit these crimes will recede if they're released from jail,
Speaker 1: And the answer is that we don't know, Like maybe
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, it seems to be the case that they might,
Speaker 1: but u S data is all over the place, So
Speaker 1: as of right, now, it's it's really hard to pinpoint
Speaker 1: an answer on that one. They're just so many factors involved,
Speaker 1: and with each individual, it's not like the psychopath is
Speaker 1: like a one clone of another. They're just oh, those
Speaker 1: are psychopathic organisms. There. No, it's it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: far more complex neurological condition. But so the good news though, is,
Speaker 1: like what we were talking about just now and earlier,
Speaker 1: the brain is malleable, that our behaviors can be formed
Speaker 1: and we can learn to better interact with other human beings.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a it's a taught thing, and and
Speaker 1: and and the actual activity of doing that sort of
Speaker 1: rewires and reshapes things so that it's easier to do. Alright.
Speaker 1: So there you have it, Um, the psychopathic child, the
Speaker 1: the homicidal child, the callous and emotional child, uh, A
Speaker 1: reasonably deep dive into what's going on inside their minds
Speaker 1: as far as we can tell, um, and what can
Speaker 1: be done to to cope with it. So I guess
Speaker 1: the answer to my initial question is of is Michael
Speaker 1: Myers possible? Is yes, but not likely. Yeah, sure it
Speaker 1: could happen, but it's very unlikely. Now I know, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of listeners out there with something to
Speaker 1: share about this. We've all had childhood's the number of
Speaker 1: people out there have children as well in their life.
Speaker 1: Uh so then we may even have some some listeners
Speaker 1: who themselves have caluson emotional traits or have children with
Speaker 1: cawuson emotional traits. And we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: And certainly if you want your name to remain anonymous,
Speaker 1: just make a note of that and absolutely always respect
Speaker 1: with that. Uh. How to get in touch with us, well,
Speaker 1: you can always go to stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where you'll find all of the podcast episodes.
Speaker 1: That's where you'll find blog post videos. Most important like
Speaker 1: links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook
Speaker 1: where We'll blow the Mind. Twitter, We'll blow the mind
Speaker 1: there as well Tumbler We're stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: All those pages have some way to interact with us
Speaker 1: as send us questions. Yeah, and if you want to
Speaker 1: just write us directly and have us read your mail
Speaker 1: potentially in a listener mail episode or just respond to privately,
Speaker 1: we'd love to do that too. And you can always
Speaker 1: reach us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works? Dot com man fo