Are Some Children Just Born Evil? (1 Viewer)

[D. Scott MacDonald]

Nope, she's a huge reader and would rather do that than just about anything else. Her second favorite activity is practicing martial arts. She only watches TV on the weekends (and even then we are usually busy doing stuff rather than lounging around or playing video games). This issue is definitely biological.

I myself made it through college with very good grades, but it usually took me twice as long to do my work and to study than those around me. This remains true today, where I function well at my job but seem to take twice as long to do things. I started taking medication three weeks ago and the difference is night and day. Now my brain has the ability to think about whatever it is I want it think about (that was actually kind of weird at first), and my productivity is significantly better.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

concerning the kid in the video mark posted...

when i was about 12 or so, my best friend had a little 5 year old nephew (who looked exactly like the kid in the video, weird) who he taught colorful language to. from then on, the kid was a total behavior problem. he didnt teach him any racial slurs, but the kid knew every other bad word there was. the kid in the video isnt necessarily a bad kid, he's just responding to what looks like his older brothers getting him to say things for the camera.

CJ

 

[MarkHastings]

That's what will most likely happen with the kid in the video. While he's just immitaing what he sees, since he is not being taught right from wrong, his innocent immitations will turn into bad behavior as he gets older.

It's VERY sad!

 

[Christ Reynolds]

yep. he's looking for acceptance from the older kids in the video, and his terrible language is regarded as pleasurable to them. he'll be a handful in a few years.

 

[Max Leung]

Yes, it can happen.

Just look at the scientific research...you know, people who actually study parenting and children for a living. Kids are NOT blank slates. And they aren't 100% governed by genes either. Why is this so hard to understand?

Good overviews:

The Blank Slate : The Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker.

Nature Via Nurture, by Matt Ridley.


(It seems to me that Chu's .sig is very prescient, particularly when applied to people's opinions on child-rearing - I wonder, is it genetic? )

 

[MarkHastings]

Of course they aren't. Just as certain diseases (i.e heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.) get passed on from generation to generation, there are definitely other things that get passed along.

For instance, depression and anxiety is a major thing in my family. My grandmother has it, my mom has it and it got passed down to me. I wasn't born a blank slate. I was born with it and no amount of parenting could have changed that. I was always a 'sad' kid. My parents gave me the world and I was still sad. So I can definitely see how a child can be evil, even though the parents have done everything to keep the child from being evil.


Kind of like one of my favorite lines from the Simpsons, where Stampy the Elephant is butting the other elephants:

Zoo Warden: "Some of them act badly because they've had a hard life, or have been mistreated...but, like people, some of them are just jerks."

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> Well, it turns out that ADD has hit our kids pretty hard. I used to not belive in ADD too much, but it turns out that there is a lot of science behind it now

I'm skeptical of any condition that didn't seem to exist 30 years ago (other than something caused by a new virus).

 

[Chu Gai]

It might not've been understood or diagnosed properly back then. Myself, I don't like the idea of treating ADD with a knee-jerk prescription of Ritalin. Strictly as an opinion, it seems to me that your doing good things with your daughter Mr. MacDonald by encouraging her continued reading and focus on a disciplinary activity like martial arts. I've a feeling she'll beat this thing.

 

[willyTass]

no different to the animal kingdom: some species REGARDLESS OF THE WAY THEY ARE REARED/ ADVERSE EXPERIENCES WHEN YOUNG have instinctual drives to kill. A lust for it.

Take dogs for instance; I've had friends who bred pitbull terriers and they swear that drive to fight and kill is in their DNA. Other breeds like labradors ar more placid and "good". Same with birds: they don't go to school to learn how to build nests. Even orphan birds , with no parental rolemodelling will know, instinctually, how to build nests. Its in them.

I think its the same with people . I've met people who've endured horrendous experiences as children and they've got a heart of gold. Others, like so many I met travelling through Eastern Europe!, you could only describe as Evil.

 

[MarkHastings]

Well, since we're all mamals and it's in our blood to survive, aren't we all born with that 'killer instinct'? It's just that we're taught (by our parents) to be "kind".

 

[Max Leung]

Yeah - even though we have instincts, we do know enough about them to try to muzzle them ("Don't murder") and to reinforce them ("Kill people that are different from us").

 

[andrew markworthy]

Just to cut through some of the misinformation that has been circulating on this thread:

The debate about whether we are born or made is known to psychologists as the nature vs nurture argument. In other words, at a simplistic level is it our genetic inheritance [nature] or our upbringing [nurture] which makes us what we are.

You will find very few psychologists or geneticists these days who would argue for an extreme version of either argument. The general opinion is that it is a mixture of both genes and environment that shape most aspects of behaviour.

Behavioural problems that are purely genetic are rare. There are e.g. cases of mental handicap that are purely genetic, but subtler psychological problems such as 'evil' behaviour usually have a faulty upbringing component as well.

How do we know this? Because carefully constructed empirical studies have shown this. To take one example. If you have enough research money and organisation, you can follow what happens to kids of mothers with a particular psyhcological problem and see what happens to them. In many instances, a child who is raised by a mother who has condition X will be far more likely to have that condition themselves than a child who is adopted at birth and is raised by a 'normal' family. However, these children raised in a 'normal' family are often still more likely to develop condition X than e.g. their adopted siblings or the general population. This gives rise to what is sometimes called a threshold model. This argues that all of us in theory can develop a particular behavioural problem. However, nearly all of us have such a high threshold that our circumstances never make us develop it. On the other hand, a kid with 'faulty' genes has a lower threshold and given some types of background (e.g. being raised by someone with behavioural problems, poor child rearing skills, etc) is more likely to develop the illness.

Thus, some kids may well be born predestined to be bad, because their genes and environment will almost certainly push them past the threshold point. But that does not absolve society from not attempting to help such kids. In fact, if anything it makes it more important that an effort is made (there is more rejoicing over saving one lost sheep, etc).


I think you're referring to the Jamie Bulger case, which was very horrible indeed. The kids in question were imprisoned in special units for disturbed offenders and given intensive psychological treatment for ten years or more. Both were eventually released under new names and identities and are reported to be leading normal lives.

 

[MarkHastings]

Misinformation on the Internet? Egads you say!

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Somebody is keeping tabs on them? Personally I wouldn't have had the patience with those kids. I would've locked them up and thrown away the keys.

 

[Chu Gai]

Far more normal than the parents of Jamie Bulger. I'd not want my daughter to meet up with either of them.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Alas, the attitude of our rabid tabloid press to a T.

There are two basic answers to your argument:

(1) We are nothing if we cannot accept that people have the capacity for repentance. I think this is a fundamental difference between the US and UK systems. The US has elected law officers and to some extent must pander to public opinion. The UK judiciary and police force are completely independent and can in effect only be dismissed from office for corruption. The USA will hand out life sentences with no opportunity for parole. The UK has issued a handful of such sentences in the whole of our island's history. And the UK has a fraction of the murder rate of the USA, so which is better for prevention - allowing the possibility of forgiveness or all-out vengeance?

(2) The crime the two ten-year old boys did was horrifying and were I Jamie Bulger's parents I would still be thirsting for their blood. But that is the precise reason we have a judicial system - to stop blood feuds and take a suitably detached view.

And to answer your question - yes, someone is keeping tabs on them and will for the rest of their lives. And what easy lives they will be - never able to tell anyone about their past, always looking over their shoulders worried that someone will recognise who they are.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I saw something on Unsolved Mysteries a few months back about how astrological alignments can be used to tell if a child is going to grow up to be a serial killer or not, the point of the segment was that some children are indeed predisposed from birth to grow up to be bad.

They used Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas and a couple others and traced their births and how the stars were aligned at the moment of their births and they were eerily similar.

I don't know if I believe that or not but it was very compelling while I was watching it.

 

[Chu Gai]

I believe there are studies that indicate the rate of recitivism is substantially greater for youthful offenders than for older ones.

 

[Lew Crippen]

It will be compelling when it is predictive—not when a few selected cases are examined ex-post facto.

 

[Max Leung]

I very much agree about the threshold thing. A very good analogy - a certain amount of abuse may not adversely affect a "normal" child when s/he reaches adulthood, but another child that isn't lucky enough to have normal genes may crack under the pressure and be horribly affected.

There is a study somewhere that has some supporting evidence that males have a more difficult time handling stressful childhoods than girls - girls are much more likely to come out unscathed. Makes sense, given the differences in testosterone and other hormones.