What do murderers think

Plenty of criminals used to think the same. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership. Editions Quartz. More from Quartz About Quartz. Follow Quartz. When Kiel compared the data from that study with the results of his latest project, he found a high degree of overlap. Koenigsberg notes that homicidal violence can itself be split into two categories : impulsive and instrumental. Impulsive violence is born of unbridled emotions and overblown reactions, a brand of behavior linked to poor frontal lobe functioning and abnormal serotonin levels.

Instrumental violence, on the other hand, is premeditated and is associated with other brain changes, such as reduced amygdala activation during emotion processing.

Koenigsberg, Vogel, and Kiehl all note that the structural data collected in the current study cannot on its own be used to predict who has committed homicide, let alone who might in the future. Nonetheless, the paper may find its way into the courtroom, says Vogel.

David Parker Ray. David Berkowitz. Richard Ramirez. Jeffrey Dahmer. Photo: user uploaded image. John Wayne Gacy. Edmund Kemper. Henry Lee Lucas. Andrei Chikatilo. Aileen Wuornos. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it.

I am beyond your experience. It remains far from clear why a few people react to abuse or trauma at an earlier stage in their lives by later becoming a serial killer. But hopefully new insights into the psychological or neurological basis of their actions may in the future help us to identify potential future such killers and dissuade them from committing such horrendous crimes.

Featured image via Pixabay. His latest book, Mind Shift OUP, , draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at a molecular and cellular level. Our Privacy Policy sets out how Oxford University Press handles your personal information, and your rights to object to your personal information being used for marketing to you or being processed as part of our business activities.

We will only use your personal information to register you for OUPblog articles. Or subscribe to articles in the subject area by email or RSS. For being so academically educated this article was poorly written.