Why do people kill each other?

• Motives: reasons to account for/explain individual’s behavior
• Typos of person: higher probabilities, label carries with it the explanation, behavior is a symptom of the label, we have trained people to categorize
• Social context: thanks to empirical research and the way we see the world, these factors are implicated
• Individual characteristics: characteristics of individuals that we know, empirically, are correlated with higher rates of murder
• Catalysts: facilitators (in video)
• Social processes: these variables are affected by the other five… e.g. where does anger come from? Answer: other people!
• What percentage of murders is committed by males (group question)? 90% or so – but why? Sociological question.
• Why did HE do it? Or… among those males who kill and among those who don’t kill – what’s the difference? Individual level question.

Dominant Theoretical Metaphor (diff explanation of yesterdays)

The killer is…

• Mad (crazy): sick (biologically, psychological pathology), irrational, not responsible (or legally less responsible)… this was a dominant way of thinking through the mid 20^th c. despite the fact that the most severely disturbed disorders account for 2-5% of all murders
• Bad (immoral): “The Asshole” paper; evil, rational, and responsible

THEORIES OF MURDER

BIOLOGICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL/PSYCHIATRIC

· People are predisposed (more likely to commit a murder – but why?)

· No twin studies where both were serial killers

· Brain scans: causal order is backward; we should ask – are there more traumas in the general population or in the serial killer population?

· “fantasies”? bullshit. You can fantasize about real things…