Dr. Essi Viding of the London Kings College Institute of Psychiatry and colleagues have found the tendency toward psychopathic behavior has a strong genetic component. (same press release here)
New research on the origins of antisocial behaviour, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, suggests that early-onset antisocial behaviour in children with psychopathic tendencies is largely inherited.
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Dr Viding's research looked into the factors that contribute to antisocial behaviour in children with and without psychopathic tendencies. By studying sets of 7-year-old twins, Dr. Viding and her colleagues were able to pinpoint to what extent antisocial behaviour in these two groups was caused by genetic and/or environmental risk factors.A sample of 3687 twin pairs formed the starting point for this research. Teacher ratings for antisocial behaviour and psychopathic tendencies (i.e. lack of empathy and remorse) were used to classify the twins. Those who were in the top 10% of the sample for antisocial behaviour were separated into two groups - those with and without psychopathic tendencies.
Following analysis, the results showed that, in children with psychopathic tendencies, antisocial behaviour was strongly inherited. In contrast, the antisocial behaviour of children who did not have psychopathic tendencies was mainly influenced by environmental factors. These findings are in line with previous research showing that children with psychopathic tendencies are at risk to continue their antisocial behaviour and are often resistant to traditional forms of intervention.
For those who recognize the name note that Robert Plomin is one of the co-authors.
Evidence for substantial genetic risk for psychopathy in 7-year-olds (Essi Viding, R. James R. Blair, Terrie E. Moffitt, Robert Plomin) is published in the June 2005 issue of The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
The bad kids who feel no remorse are genetically bad.
Preliminary findings from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) indicate that within the early-onset group there are at least two etiologically distinct groups of children. Antisocial behavior in 7-year-old children with callous and unemotional traits is under strong genetic influence, whereas antisocial behavior in children without such personality traits is primarily environmentally mediated.
Such findings of etiological differences are prompting the search for risk genes, as well as highlighting the need to study environmental risk within a genetic framework. It must be emphasized that high heritability is not equivalent to immutability. Better understanding of gene-environment interactions can come to inform successful prevention programs that target young children. These prevention programs may well be different for etiologically distinct subgroups of children at risk for violent and antisocial outcomes.
Psychopathy is strongly genetically infuenced.
Twin studies can help distinguish between genetic and environmental determinants of violence, said Essi Viding of the Institute of Psychiatry in London. In antisocial 7-year-olds with callous and unemotional traits, Viding found, the antisocial behavior was strongly genetic in origin (a group heritability of 80%). If these youths can be identified early, perhaps with a genetic test on cells from a cheek swab, one could target programs for them. "Genes are not a blueprint that determines outcome," said Viding. "Rather, they act together with other risk or protective factors to increase or reduce the risk of disorder."
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Antisocial behavior and physical violence, it turns out, are moderately heritable. A recent meta-analysis of behavioral genetic studies estimated that 41% of the variance on antisocial behavior is due to genetic factors, about 16% to shared environmental factors, and about 43% to nonshared environmental factors.
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Viding's group is currently trying to find genes associated with callous-unemotional traits. If such genes can be identified, the researchers can explore how environment affects the outcomes of children who carry the genes. For example, they may be able to see whether the same genes place children at risk for both antisocial behavior and hyperactivity. They may also be able to assess how risk genes interact with risk environments throughout development.
Genes are not a blueprint that determines outcome. Genes alone are neither sufficient, nor necessary, in causing the antisocial behavior.
I am highly skeptical of claims that genes alone are never sufficient to cause antisocial behavior. Certainly some genotypes make people more at risk of being violent or antisocial only in response to specific types of environmental influences. But surely other genotypes must make other children born "bad to the bone". Claims that environmental interventions can always override genetic influences strike me as denial. Sorry, sometimes the genome wins.
To put my argument another way: Some people are more genetically determined than others. (and I predict people will become more genetically determined in the future) Some people have genes that make them highly susceptible to programming by environmental influences. But others have genes that make them highly resistant to various types of environmental influences. For example, some people are going to be happy or unhappy regardless of their environment. Others will have moods and motivations that are greatly influenced by disappointments or good fortune. Some will become violent as a result of child abuse. Others will stay pacifist no matter how much abuse they suffer.
Also, in some cases where genes make someone highly susceptible to environmental influences the effect is to make that person more prone to become criminal or otherwise problematic for the rest of us. Genes can make a person prone to going down an undesirable developmental path or so prone to antisocial behavior that without taking some rather severe steps to isolate such people from "the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune" some of them are going to go over to the "dark side of the force". The degree to which they can be triggered by environmental stimuli is so great that the ability of environment to influence them is not a reason for optimism.
Even in cases where one twin becomes a psychopath and the other does not become a psychopath that is not automatic proof that therefore social environment made the difference. Some part of deveopmental outcome is due to random noise. Genes do not perfectly control development. Hardwired differences in brains of twins will be present at birth due to chance. Throw in additional noise in very early childhood and before many social influences are felt genetic and non-genetic but developmentally caused and irreversible (at least with current biotechnology) differences will already be well established.
Genes control the extent to which a person is susceptible to various events in the environment and genes exercise great influence over how a person will respond to abuse as a child or a threat uttered in a bar or other events in a person's life. Genes even control the extent to which developmental outcomes are due to random noise from the environment and from Brownian motion. Hopes that socialization can always compensate for genetic inheritance to prevent antisocial thought patterns and behavior strike me as hopelessly naive.
Once psychopathy as a genetically caused condition becomes accepted and genetic testing and genetic engineering becomes possible do you favor or oppose the use of either genetic testing (for selective abortion) or genetic engineering (perhaps delivered in utero) to prevent the development of psychopaths? Consider your other choices. Early and lifetime institutionalization of kids who are bad to the bone would prevent them from preying on others but conflict with the assumption of "innocent until one has committed a crime", let alone "innocent until proven guilty". The other option is what we do now: let those kids grow up and victimize people before being caught committing crimes. That latter option consigns some people to future victimhood and, worse yet, not all psychopaths are ever caught by the criminal justice system. "Successful psychopaths" with an increased corpus callosum but with a symmetrical hippocampus are much less likely to get caught by the police than psychopaths that also have an asymmetrical hippocampus.
Suppose early environmental conditioning techniques which can reverse psychopathy are discovered. Parentheticaly I'm extremely skeptical of the notion than any socialization practices can counteract the effects of gross differences in brain morphology characteristic of psychopaths. But suppose I'm wrong. Would you favor removing a very young budding psychopath from his parents in order to put him through a social conditioning therapy to reverse his psychopathy?
By Randall Parker at 2005 May 26 08:55 AM Brain Genetics | TrackBackThis study raises some interesting questions about psychoalytic theories of Freud and his followers, who claimed that the bad behavior of many people is really due to the bad treatment they have received from their parents, etc..
Although it is true that most viloent criminals were mistreated by at least one of their parents, perhaps those parents who are cruel enough to mistreat their own children, had something genetically wrong with them in the first place, and they just passed these genes to their own children... Thus this theory might explain the battered child syndrome, to some extent, when those chilren who were mistreated by their parents, often mistreat their own children when they grow up... Perhaps, the final result depends on nature, not nurture. The nervous system is probably inherited to a large extent, even though it is malleable and educable...
Randall Parker wrote:
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"Suppose early environmental conditioning techniques which can reverse psychopathy are discovered. Parentheticaly I'm extremely skeptical of the notion than any socialization practices can counteract the effects of gross differences in brain morphology characteristic of psychopaths. But suppose I'm wrong. Would you favor removing a very young budding psychopath from his parents in order to put him through a social conditioning therapy to reverse his psychopathy?"
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I would say that IF the parents of a potential psychopath, have dangerous behavior in their record, special legislation must be created so that the children are separated from the parents and given to good parents for adoption. After all, genetics is not totally deterministic, it is also probabilistic, in the sense that even the child of a terrible person, has a chance. For instance, the son of the Nazi criminal Dr. Mengele, as well as the son of Rudolf Hess, turned out to be reasonable people, at least on surface.
Should it come to pass that genetic tests can pin down the "genetic endowment" for pathologies such as psychopathy, would it rehabilitate the Nazis in the public eye? That's scary.
More practically, would it lead to mandatory testing for those found to be psychopathic after being picked up for crimes (especially as juveniles) and the encouragement of sterilization in return for more lenient treatment by the courts? Reducing the genetic contribution of psychopaths to the next generation would cut the incidence, and it is not cruel or unusual to offer a criminal an incentive in return for a reduced sentence.
Why do you think it's necessary to remove potential psycopaths from their parents? If their parents are kind people, they will be an important source of support and love. Someday there will pharmaceutical interventions developed that will help people genetically programmed for psychopathy but not necessarily erase their entire personalities. As usual, the trouble is the slippery slope.
Lei,
First of all, I do not think any kind of psychotherapy or conditioning could undo psychopathy.
Second, I figure the odds are pretty decent that parents of psychopaths are not as loving as the average parent.
Third, if some form of conditioning could reverse psychopathy then it may be well beyond the resources (both intellectual and financial) to deliver such a therapy.
Fourth, I was putting forth a hypothetical to test how far people are willing to go to reduce the number of psychopaths in a population. Do the interests of the larger public override the interests of the parents?
A license is required to drive, but not to have children and raise them. How crazy is that? If a child inherited psychopathic tendencies from his parents, the odds of them being dysfunctional and creating a dysfunctional environment are quite high.
Pharmaceuticals today do not correct genetic errors. They cover them up, compensate for them temporarily. Unless the anti-sociopath drugs can be implanted for long term mandatory delivery, the chances are great that the sociopath will only pretend to take them.
People would have a disincentive to take drugs which induce pangs of conscience, no?
Licensing for childbearing could be abused in countless ways; it's hard to see how a government could be trusted with such a power unless the qualifications were extremely basic and not subject to bureaucratic discretion. It's much less problematic to deal with those who go beyond mere dysfunction to criminal acts.
I see what you mean. We already remove kids from unfit parents via foster care and adoption.
(BTW, maybe you want to close the italics in this post because it's causing your whole front page to be italicized.)
First of all the word "parent" doesn't appear in the article so they didn't bother looking for intergenerational correlations.
Secondly, I'm skeptical of any claims that autism, homosexuality, psychopathology, etc. are primarily "genetic" given the highly pathological nature of hyperurbanized society.
It seems to me that hypocrisy is one of the primary traits being selected for these days -- and that it takes some refinement to get hypocrisy "right" as a trait. If you aren't highly evolved as a hypocrite, you come of as a sociopath. So it may be what we're seeing is a bunch of kids who are being queued to turn off their moral faculties because they aren't living among kin -- and they just don't have the equipment to compete with the really urbane, cosmopolitan genotypes on that level so they are obviously sociopathic.
You can download a pdf of the classic book on psychopathy The Mask of Sanity by Hervey Cleckley:
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF
The following site links to a lot of information on psychopaths:
I believe it was a Canadian psychologist who pointed out a few years ago that many CEOs (in his opinion) met the diagnostic criteria for sociopathic behavior. (I think the description in this posting sounds more like a sociopathic personality disorder; the lack of empathy is characteristic.)
It would be interesting to run the gene tests on a range of CEOs and politicians. I wonder if we'd discover that the gene was not all that rare in very successful and ambitious people. I doubt most of them commit murder. Murder is messy, wasteful, and troublesome. It is the last resort for the talented and well adjusted sociopath and I suspect it's rarely necessary for them.
So what's the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? I bet a lot of that will turn out to be environmental. Given native talent and a supportive environment the gene carrier becomes a ruthless, self-centered, callous but very successful CEO (perhaps even, thanks to the wonders of the market, a boon to humankind). Given a different environment, or fewer talents, and they become a very nasty sort.
So even here I think we'll find environment has its effects.
Psychopathy is an inability to feel fear or anxiety.Unfortunately our human history has been filled with fearless leaders.With a loss of fear and anxiety psychopaths cannot have a conscience(as conscience is driven by anxiety),and therefore they cannot feel guilt or remorse.Psychopathy is a genetic condition.I think we should have a global registration of psychopaths,so we can guide and control them. Malaria has caused the most damage to our species,and after we eradicate malaria,sickle-cell and thalassaemia will continue to be a huge problem.Psychopathy has caused as much,perhaps more damage to our species as malaria.We must spend more on research,so we can give the psychopath the ability to feel fear and anxiety.
Invisible Scientist, Braddock: you should think carefully about what you are suggesting. Do you really think a State Eugenics Police with absolute power to decide who does and doesn't get to breed would not be infinitely worse than merely having a few psycopaths wandering around?
"Ah, but *our* State Eugenics Police would use its powers only for wise and benevolent purposes as specified by wise and benevolent people like us. It would prevent all possibility of any future Stalins or Maos arising. There would be no possibility of it ever being taken over by people less wise or benevolent than us, or otherwise abused in any way." Yeah, right.
Alan Little,
Suppose Alan Faughnan is correct and smart well adjusted sociopaths are overrepresented at the top ranks of corporations. Suppose this becomes generally known. Then what happens when genetic engineering of offspring becomes possible? Will people who want successful children genetically engineer their kids to be not only smart but also manipulative, charming, and callous?
Will we need State Eugenics Police to prevent people from having kids who are dominant, manipulative, deceptive, and otherwise equipped to ascend ladders to power?
I don't automatically buy the assumption of your argument that the state is the bigger threat. My fear is that technology will so empower individuals that individuals will constitute the bigger threat.
Think of it this way: Who kills more Americans? Agents of the state or individuals acting on their own? My guess is the latter and individuals kill more than the state kills by orders of magnitude.
Randall,
"Who kills more Americans?" - not a question that deeply bothers me personally since I'm not American, but congratulations anyway on living in a country with currently one of the world's less dangerous and irresponsible governments. If you take a broader view, governments generally beat individuals as murderers by many orders of magnitude. The rise of liberal democracies in places like Europe, North America and India in the last century or two looks like it may be in the course of changing that track record, but the twentieth century suggests that process, if it is happening, is far from complete.
Who would you trust to decide which genetic profiles are going to be deemed unfashionable and doomed to extermination this week? Would you personally drag people with the "wrong" genetic traits off to the forced sterilisation centres?
Alan,
As for "Who kills more Americans": You could ask the same of Brits or Canadians or Swedes for that matter. What is the ratio of killings by agents of the government versus killings by others? Keep in mind that even in jurisdictions where capital punishment is prohibited police still end up having to kill dangerous criminals.
Regards the question of sterilization, you are missing the gist of my point: Once genetic engineering becomes possible the genotypes of the parents won't limit the genotypes of the offspring. Someone who has genotypes that make them prone to psychopathy could genetically engineer their children to not have such genotypes. At the same time, people who do not have such genotypes could elect to give their children such genotypes. So sterilzation will be irrelevant.
>>For instance, the son of the Nazi criminal Dr. Mengele, as well as the son of Rudolf Hess, turned out to be reasonable people, at least on surface.
Dr. Mengele wasn't a psychopath. He was an obedient government employee, just following orders like everyone else. Psychopaths are people who murder and steal OUTSIDE THE ACCEPTED CARTEL.
I would like to pose a question to John Finnighan. I would like to know how you feel on the subject of agorephobia and other mental illnesses in that catagory. I feel you know alot about the subject you were speaking about on May the 28th. However I believe we see things a bit differently if by saying you saying that you think our world leaders are indeed psycopaths. if we are indeed doing the right thing, I believe lack of fear is good and perhaps even necessary in some sitiuations. please get back to me a/s/a/p
“Second, I figure the odds are pretty decent that parents of psychopaths are not as loving as the average parent.” -Randall Parker. I would disagree. As a parent of a child that shown ADHD symptoms by the age of 3, then conduct disorder (a convenient label for antisocial personality due to youth status), bi-polar, and PTSD, despite it all I have provided a nurturing, supportive environment since his age of 2.5 years (father was abusive, and I fled for his (son’s) life). Living quite functionally, two children from first marriage grew to be happy, successful, college educated people now married for a few years, and no children of their own as yet, and my second marriage was to a cunning con artist, who turned out to be abusive, and married to two other women previously and on the run from the law for child support by them. With his child, I have had a long, dark road despite every effort on my part to guide him to be a productive, healthy person. He is not violent to people, but he is a chronic liar, stealer, aggressive to our two dogs, and had set fires. He also has the impulse to steal knives (have to keep everything but the butter knives locked up). I never had any of these things as a part of my own middle-class childhood, yet here I have a son that seems to have it all – all the ills, and I find gratefulness that he is not so far an ax murderer, rapist, or armed robber. I’ve sought help forever from psychiatrists, put him though the legal system to include probation, and therapists for three years that I have never been impressed with. Nothing changes my son’s behavior, even while I show love, balanced discipline to include positive and negative reinforcement, ie; groundings and privilege loss. Meds do help, but we still see aggression toward the dogs, chronic lying, and steals impulsively (mostly from me or within our home). I’ve given him no reason to fear, and he misbehaves fearlessly. What boggles my mind is his reaction when caught red-handed of sneaking (example-stole a kitchen knife and tried to sneak it back into the utility drawer when I announced it was missing) – he gets resentful of his deception being uncovered – there is no sense of guilt, or even shame; just anger and resentment that he was ‘found out’. Considering myself raised as a Roman Catholic (in other words, having enough guilt for ten people) I see my son’s future quite grim, and a threat to society, and I feel helpless after trying everything in my nurturing power to guide him from deviance all his life. Now he is 17, and I see it as one more year of prison left for me. I can’t leave my home because I know it wouldn’t be safe. My freedom hours are his school hours, and probation is the only thing that keeps him there for now. Its genetics, and the two older kids got mine, and the younger one got his fathers. I come to believe that you can’t fight genetics, no matter what a parent will try to do or not. Is he a bona-fide psychopath? Who knows. But his actions are frightening, and indeed future outlook very grim, with much sadness added to my broken heart for this one.
I find it interesting that it was automatically assumed that being a "sociopath" was a bad thing... the author even goes so far as to say "successful sociopaths" simply haven't been caught yet. Few even consider that perhaps rather than "those few that don't get caught" are the excpetion to the violent rule, that the violent Sociopath is the exception, and that the same genetics that makes them callous and decietful is what allows your CEOs and Senators and Generals to make your society work?
Trying to kill this gene would be like trying to get rid of all the Alpha Wolves. The species would die.
I would like to point out that psychopaths are not always violent or criminal. However, they are all a tremendous burden on society. Take for example the psychopath that preys on people to support them financially. This could be a person who lives with friends because they are between jobs or cannot afford a place of their own. They also are known for having terrible credit problems. Their whole goal in life is to satisfy themselves for the here and now with no regard for who they hurt. Only some psychopaths are successful in business, but their personal lives are a mess. Not to mention the people in their lives that are a mess because they have intimate relationships with them. The people they leave in their wake are left with broken lives and hopefully their friends and family will be there to pick up the pieces.
Just from my personal experience and from observation of others, there is no hope that any psychopath will change. I have also seen the parents of adult psychopaths and seen children of psychopathic parents and believe me the apple does not fall far from the tree. Being a psychopath is a bad thing for everyone except perhaps the psychopath themselves -- because frankly they just don't care. If this gene could be eliminated, it would be a great benefit for the whole world.
after reading a study about how clinical psychopaths were ONLY attracted to post-pubescent women, i came to the conclusion that psychopathy must be a gene wishing to replicate itself and that the entire social system set up around the gene are solely intended for this purpose.
All sociopaths are harmful to society, not only the violent ones. It is physiological, not caused by how the parents raise the child. Read "The Sociopath Next Door". I am the loving, attentive, nurturing mother of a sociopath. Her father is a sociopath whom I left when my daughter was two and a half, thinking that would save her. The cerebral cortex in sociopaths' brains works differently than in non-sociopaths. Also, emotional situations trigger increased temporal lobe activity in sociopaths in the same manner that an algebraic calculations trigger this activity in non-sociopaths. Nothing the parents do will create the right connections and instill conscience.
I believe that people use the term Sociopath to point out to environmental causes, and Psychopath is the best term to describe a person who is believed to be genetically or biologically predisposed to a lack of emotions, and shows callousness beyond what we see in the "normal" antisocial population.
I do belived Psychopathy (not Antisocial PD) to be biological. These folks are just incapable of feeling fear, or anxiety, or become attached to anyone. That is not mere criminality, this has to be BIOLOGICAL. It is not a "learned behavior." You can't coherse anyone to stop feeling anxiety or fear!
Now the question is, what to do with these folks? They've tried hospitalizing them but it does not work, psychotherapy seems to make them worse. There is no known medication that can give emotions to someone who doesn't have them. Maybe at some point in time there will be, who knows? Once they are able to pinpoint the location of abnormality in the brain.
And it's not caused by the parents. Whoever said that is just wrong. Could it be inherited by someone in the family? maybe, but that doesn't mean the immediate parents will have it!
Any further developments along these lines? Do you know of any candidate genes for psychopathy/sociopathy? Research seems to have slowed down.