Who can shoot to kill?

A reader sent me this interesting video (a little bit timely) about what type of motivations (or what type of person) you need to be to shoot to kill, at least in war. I would like to see a similar explanation of what it takes to kill outside of a wartime, soldier situation.

My thoughts on the video:
1% of fighter pilots accounted for 50% of kills
of people who shot to kill, 2%

Most men can't make good snipers because most men cannot kill someone who is not trying to kill him.

I love the part at 8:40 about Che Guevara being a really nasty, brutal person, and why people are executed from behind. If you doubt this a little, you should read about what he did in Africa. Why is Che such an acceptable person nowadays?

10:30 are the people who can shoot to kill, either because they're psychopaths and don't recognize fear in others, or because (according to this guy) out of love and the desire to protect the people you love. I think that may be true, but I think there might actually be a bit of an overlap between the two groups.

On killing (part 2)

A little bit of a follow up to this older post, from a reader:

I thought this interview was an interesting contrast to the videos of serial killers that are often discussed on the forum.

I've often said that the ability to take a life is really just a matter of motivation.  This guy had to face that choice because he was drafted.  It's clear that his conscience bothers him - but he has an interesting idea: "It's not that they don't deserve to have been born, but they don't deserve to keep on living."  I think in narrow cases, the death penalty is justified along these lines.  However, given the practical problems (i.e. the high rate of "innocent" people on death row), the cases are really quite few where it's justified.

On a more personal level, my father was a sniper in a revolution and on his death bed he worried that I might judge him for his actions ("I killed a lot of people.  I don't know how many; a lot.").  It was one of those rare moments when being...different as we are...maybe served a better purpose.  He knew that I didn't care - it didn't change how I felt about him (good and bad).  I think he liked that my response was that I wasn't qualified to judge him and I didn't care.  It seemed to give him comfort.

Murderous nature

Mother nature is From a reader:

Some birds have evolved such that their chicks will, as the first act of their life, murder their foster siblings.

Caught on film:



Obvious questions:
Are the chicks evil? Do they have free will, mens rea, etc?

If there is a God, we should do a class action suit against him.

See also these comments on the recent Walking Dead episode (spoilers). When is killing wrong and when is it right? And who decides, based on what subjective perception of the world?

Fictional sociopaths: Smerdyakov?

For some reason I found this to be so funny. From a reader:

I am 70 years old. I posted to the forum on your website but got a very nasty response from the denizens there. I thought maybe it was because saying I looked forward to finding a community of like minded people was a faux pas. But you say the same thing so I guess it was alright. 

I think I'm a sociopath/psychopath but I am different from you in some ways. You describe yourself as a chameleon in who you are around different people. I have been a different person at different times and places in my life but my identity has been driven primarily by fantasy. When I was 13, I identified with Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. Since he killed himself at the end of the novel, I decided to kill myself. But I didn't succeed and ended up in a mental hospital instead. While my parents were finding the right place for me and I was getting interviewed, I felt my fantasy shifting from Smerdyakov to just a suicidal mental patient. I saw myself as the director and author of a play in which I was also the star. It seemed everyone acted accorded to the role I assigned him/her. I liked that. I was in the nut house for about two years. At some point, I read about teenaged "thrill killers" and decided I wanted to be one. So I selected a victim who was convenient and tried to kill her. I had nothing against this girl, a childhood friend and neighbor, actually. I hit her over  the head with a heavy,  blunt object. She got away and, luckily for me, I was already a mental patient so I didn't go to jail. I just went through my adolescence in the hospital and was discharged around the age of 15, finished high school and went through college and managed to have a pretty normal life since then. 

I discovered I was a sexual masochist, was adventurist, worked in offices, dropped out to be a hippy, joined a cult (Maharaj Ji), co-founded The Eulenspiegel Society, S/M liberation, etc. At 70, I'm in a stable relationship, 24 years. I'm on Social Security and am pretty mellow and laid-back in my old age. I'm pretty happy about the life I led, I don't feel guilty about much of anything although I realize some of the things I did were pretty shitty. I don't know. Blame it on the old amygdala. 

Hilarious, Smerdyakov really? And why is the Brothers Karamazov so popular with sociopaths?

Psychopathy, autism, and pointing fingers (part 1)

This was an interesting article from an autistic activist who is also anti-ableism in all its forms about why psychopath is a too often misused and maligned term/disorder:

I have become used to being told that I do not have feelings, that I am innately incapable of relating to other people as human beings or having any empathy at all, that this is a core component of what it means to be autistic. I have become used to hearing this said constantly by so-called professionals, dramatically by television personalities, clinically by journalists and academics, and casually by friends, acquaintances, family. But I have never become used to the feeling of absolute devastation weighing somewhere deep in my chest each time I find myself on the receiving end of this accusation.

Empathy is what makes us human.

It’s no wonder that the idea of psychopathy is terrifying. If psychopathy means the inability to experience empathy, and empathy is what makes us human, then psychopathy is literally the dehumanizing condition. Psychopaths populate crime dramas, horror films, murder mysteries, and thrillers. It’s the casual diagnosis for mass murderers, serial rapists, and child abusers.

But it is also deeply personal, profoundly ableist and sanist, and rooted in a complex, interlocking web of structural racism, ageism, and sexism.

She draws connections to autism and sociopathy and criticizes those with disorders who distance themselves from other disorders for the sake of seeming more normal to the ableist:

In response to frequent claims in the media and by policymakers that autistic people lack empathy (and are therefore violent psychopaths), many people in the autistic community, including autistic activists, begin the process of disavowal.

“No, autistic people are nothing like psychopaths. We are more likely to be the victims of crime while psychopaths are usually victimizers.”

“No, someone who would shoot dozens of innocent children wasn’t autistic. That’s not autism. That’s mental illness.”

“An autistic person wouldn’t commit such horribly violent crimes. Only a psychopath could do that.”

If empathy is what makes us human, and autistic people are as human as anyone else, then we must have empathy. It must be some other kind of person who doesn’t experience empathy. It must be someone who is truly psychopathic. This is the logic path that afflicts so many disability communities. Disavowal of one another has become a way of life. Many autistic people routinely decry the use of the slur retarded, yet assert in the same breath that they aren’t crazy or mentally ill. 

I love this tendency amongst people to distinguish their own failings as being somehow more excusable than other people's failings, e.g. "my limitations on empathy are not as serious as yours," or "my impulsivity or violence is due to excess of emotion, not lack of emotion," or "I'm only violent when I'm misunderstood, but you can be violent based solely on opportunism."

For more on the problems of stigmatizing mental illness, either coming from within or without the mental illness communities, see also United States President Barack Obama.  

Famous sociopaths: George Zimmerman?

So George Zimmerman. I get that some people think that he is a soulless sociopath who stalked Trayvon Martin like a predator might stalk his prey (especially since he didn't show the proper remorse?). Or maybe he just made a bad judgment call. Because I think everyone agrees that there are times when killing is "good" or efficient, e.g. death penalty, police using deadly force, or war. Moreover, many people can imagine a situation in which they themselves would kill (preschool class hostage situation?). And I think a lot of people think that this wasn't an efficient kill, but let's think about why. First we have to think about how to value someone's life.

Maybe it's their net benefit to society minus their net cost in terms of raw production/consumption. Several years ago one of my friend's mother died after a lengthy illness. I could not help but notice what I thought were efficiencies in this situation, with all of her stuff being divided up amongst her children.

Maybe we are more generous and we just look at production, so lifetime earning potential. For someone like Trayvon Martin, who was on his third suspension from school of the academic year at the time of the killing, maybe $1M and change? And I don't know much about Zimmerman, but he was living in a gated community, so maybe twice that (although he was 12 years older than Trayvon)?

Or maybe we think a better method of valuing life value of a statistical life ("VSL"). This is calculated by looking at how much of a monetary premium people require before they engage in risky behavior, like being an underwater welder. Using this valuation, the value of Trayvon's life would be significantly greater, probably closer to $10M than to $1M. And when you put it that way, it's hard to think that Trayvon's killing was worth $10M. Because let's guess that the risk of Zimmerman dying from the altercation was 20% (which I think is pretty generous). And when Zimmerman shot the weapon, risk of Trayvon dying was something like 40% (also generous to Zimmerman)? So now we have an expected loss of $4M for an expected savings of $2M (assuming that Zimmerman's life is roughly worth the same as Trayvon's). Not a good deal. So there turns out to be a huge social and personal cost to killing particularly as the standard of living has risen, which is maybe why we have see a big decrease in killing over the past 100 years? (See, even sociopaths know that killing is bad).

So yeah, Zimmerman seems to have exercised poor judgment. But once it got to the choice of pulling the trigger, didn't he probably just do what "felt right" in the moment? But this is the problem with empaths confusing objective assessments of the right/wrong thing to do with their own personal feelings on the matter. Because unless you believe the stalking sociopath theory of George Zimmerman, isn't he just a guy like you who acted on his feelings and turned out to be "wrong"? And his intentions were good, right? That should count for a lot? So no, I'm not surprised he got off because he did something that normal people do every day (well-intentioned acting on his gut), and if that were wrong than everyone would be wrong.

Pro-social sociopath (part 3)

Ok, a few more responses about the legitimate foundation of the stigma against sociopaths, and then we'll stop this series.

• you said you salivate at the thought of ruining people (that's been stuck in my head for a while btw). 

Yes, I do. It's an involuntary reaction to a stimulus, like someone becoming sexually aroused. I once heard a (possibly specious?) statistic that men think about sex every seven seconds. And I bet some of those times are triggered by girls younger than 16 years old. Maybe they even wish that it was ok to sleep with girls that young but since it isn't, they don't. And in any case, they can't control the fact that they are attracted to them. It's just the way they're wired. Similarly, I am also wired to enjoy the aggression inherent in power games. And there are certain contexts in which these power games are particularly useful, like in times of war/diplomacy/debate, just like how there's nothing wrong with sex in the right contexts. It's good for society to have a few people around that don't shy away from conflict but actually enjoy it, particularly as long as you can convince us we're on your team. I understand that people are concerned that I actually "ruin" people in that the person is "ruined". I don't. I have always defined and used the term to refer to power games (ruined in this sense means the same thing as it would in the context of a game, "I've ruined her" = I've beat her in a game). I'm not results-oriented about the ruining. I don't actually want to hurt them. But I still make a game out of it. To use the previous example, a man might flirt with a young girl just to see where it could possibly lead without actually intending to sleep with her. Similarly, I will sometimes exercise small degrees of influence over people to see how quickly I can acquire even larger degrees of influence over them. I don't actually use that influence to intentionally or malicious harm them (unless that's what they're asking me to do).

• and that you've never killed anyone but very likely could. how can you not think that would make people hate sociopaths?

Yes, I understand, it would be scary if I had actually ever said that I "very likely could" kill someone or if a significant percentage of sociopaths are killers (I don't know what percentage of sociopaths are killers, and I don't think anyone does, but it can't be that high because there simply aren't that many murders committed). I think what I said was roughly (and even this was taken out of context): "is it possible that I would kill someone? I don't think I would, but it's possible." This is true. In my mind pretty much anything is possible -- I'm naturally very open-minded about what is and is not possible and my educational background has also led me to believe that it is foolish to not believe that it's within the realm of possibility that killing (either as a perpetrator or victim) could be part of my life -- or having a child with down syndrome, or becoming an amputee, or any number of unusual and unlikely but very possible events. I actually think it's weird that people assume that they're much more likely to be the victim of killing than the perpetrator, particularly because if most killers have only killed once, the odds of killer/killed happening to you are not so different. I wish more people would acknowledge that they too could be killers, given the right circumstances, then maybe they would take appropriate precautions to avoid things that might trigger any latent violent tendencies, like I do and have done since the DC metro worker incident from the book. If you have never experienced anything approaching a murderous rage, good for you but I fear you are in the minority of the population and there's no guarantee that you won't ever ("she always seemed so mild-mannered..."). But despite sometimes feeling like or wishing that I could "stick it to" someone, I have no real history of non-consensual violence and I don't really have the skills for killing someone even if I wanted to. My guess is that there is a greater chance of being struck by lightning than being killed by a sociopath and I am certain that there is a much greater chance of being the victim of violence perpetuated by a non-sociopath than by a sociopath. Do you know what kills much more frequently than sociopathy? Love kills. Emotions kill. It happens so often that we have a separate version of homicide for it, voluntary manslaughter. If you really want to decrease your likelihood of being murdered, you'd never get married, disown your family, never have kids. But of course this is stupid to do when the chance of getting murdered by anyone is so low and much lower than dying doing any number of other activities we still willingly engage in (driving automobiles, working, biking, etc.)

• You are as repulsed by the fat girl as anyone else, but you see an opportunity to use her and have no qualms against taking it.

No, let me be very clear -- I am not repulsed. The fat woman does not bother me. Not only am I not repulsed, I don't understand why your feeling of repulsion and your mind-blindness are so strong that you can't imagine anyone not feeling repulsed to the point that you keep insisting that I am. I am not you. And your continued projection of your own failings unto me (along with a laundry list of failings that you imagine me to have) are telling as to how and why there is such a negative (and still unfounded, as far as this recent exercise is concerned) stigma against sociopaths. Why would her appearance offend me at all? I'd love to see someone even attempt to come up with a rational reason why, and yet you all conveniently write off this particularly ugly and antisocial empath trait as being "trivial" or necessary to the survival of humanity by ensuring that there be social conformity. Conformity as to what? Fit of clothing? Is it also ok to make everyone conform to the same religion? Same political beliefs? No? And yet, you all think there's an incredibly compelling reason to shame a fat person out of completely innocuous behavior. This is nonsense. It's irrational and hurtful and it's so common that you can't even imagine what humanity might look like without it. I don't think this example is trivial, rather I think this example and your reactions to it clearly illustrate how convinced empaths seem to be that their fecal matter doesn't stink.

• And when you've used her up, when her value is gone, there's no marriage contract, no division of property, just a social umbilical cord to cut which thrusts her back out into the world, cold, naked and alone.

This is a funny thing to say, especially when the actual marriage success rate is 50%. I guess empaths are all selfish and self-interested? I don't think I've met anyone who consistently acts outside their own self-interest, and I don't think we'd want them to, or at least rational self-interest is the basis of capitalistic economies.

• The person who commits a crime in a moment of temporary madness, or a blackout, is considered to be less dangerous than the one who knowingly and willingly commits an identical crime. The former is not held responsible, and in less need of reform. The latter is responsible for his actions, and heavier penalties are necessary to discourage future crimes.

It's not clear that sociopaths are actually deterred by heavier penalties. In fact, there has been substantial evidence suggesting that sociopath do not respond in the same way to punishment (but they do respond to incentives). If the idea is to actually prevent sociopaths from doing criminal acts, a one-size fits all method is not at all optimal. And I don't believe that sociopaths are incapable of reform. Sociopaths may not respond well to the current methods of prisoner reform, but we are far from having exhausted every possible option in terms of attempted reform of criminal sociopaths.

• Sociopaths do not feel guilt and will never atone, and thus commit social crimes in perpetuity without any legal or social recourse. The solution, then, is to identify people who are sociopaths and ostracize them, strip them of social privileges and cast them out.

Sociopaths don't need to feel guilt/atone to choose to behave in socially beneficial ways. And your solution seems difficult to execute. Historically, what typically happens when you disenfranchise a group of people and treat them as less than? Does it work out well? No, because after they are no longer invested in your society (nothing to lose), they will have every incentive to tear it down (French Revolution, and really every other revolution, terrorism, etc.) And if we're imprisoning people based on their status (and an inborn genetic propensity at that), then we're opening the door to any number of atrocities committed against types of people that we might, in all our infinite and flawless wisdom, consider a net loss to society -- disabled people, mentally sick, even poor children who, just like sociopaths, are statistically more likely to grow up and become criminals. And if we're going to eliminate things that seem to cause problems, let's also get rid of religion because it makes people bigots and terrorists, and children in general because killers have to come from somewhere, and money because people don't like that other people have more of it and sometimes they commit crimes or murder for it, corporations, and a slew of other really great ideas for social reform. A certain degree of conformity is beneficial to society, but absolute conformity is absolute death.

• I mean, sociopaths, almost all of them, have antisocial behaviors. And you are asking why humans, who life together, who organize in a society, stigmatize those who have antisocial behaviors?

My point is that everyone has antisocial behaviors. The sociopath's antisocial behaviors may seem uniquely distasteful to you, and it may be difficult for you to acknowledge your own failings, but it's not at all clear that sociopaths as a class of people are a net loss to society. You may have an intuition that this is true, but your intuitions appear to be tainted by your visceral negative reactions to the very idea of sociopaths. So I'm not just going to take your word for it on sociopaths being pure evil, and I don't think any reasonable person should. If your beliefs are really based in fact, they should hold up to even a modest degree of scrutiny. Otherwise, “that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." I'm not saying that people can't hate sociopaths -- they can and they do and I'm sure nothing will change that, particularly for some of you. But sociopaths are here, we're queer, and if you want to make our lives worse in some way, at least acknowledge that you are really just blindly enforcing your own personal and subjective set of aesthetic preferences of what humanity should look like onto sociopaths in the same way that you bully fat girls in a tube top. And it's not even effective -- as much as society shames fat girls in tube tops, they keep doing it.

• A clue - empaths, and people of this ilk, especially in a group, as you know, are a thousand times as intelligent as any sociopath.

One more outrageous claim to add to the pile of irrational outrage. But this has been incredibly enlightening to me. I am pretty sure I now know where the intense stigma and dislike for sociopaths comes from, but unfortunately it's not anything that any of you seem to be able to put into words. Correct me if I'm wrong.

On killing

This was interesting:

"There are no atheists in foxholes," the saying goes, but according to this important book there are many conscientious objectors. In World War II and before, only 15 to 20 percent of soldiers fired their weapons at enemy soldiers in view, even if their own lives were endangered. Lt. Col. (Ret.) Grossman, a military historian, psychologist and teacher at West Point, builds upon the findings of Gen. S. L. A. Marshall in Men Against Fire (1978) and confirmatory evidence from Napoleonic, Civil and other wars. "Throughout history the majority of men on the battlefield would not attempt to kill the enemy, even to save their own lives." (p. 4)

* * *

The compunction against killing occurs in close combat situations, including aerial dogfights where pilots can see each other. It does not prevail with killing at a distance by artillery or bombing from airplanes. Machine gun teams also boost the firing rate because individuals cannot simply pretend to fire or intentionally mis-aim. In aerial combat one percent of pilots made over thirty percent of kills; the majority of fighter pilots never shot down a plane, perhaps never tried to.

* * *

In the U.S. Civil War, well-trained soldiers fired over the enemy's heads, or only pretended to fire. Of 27,000 muzzle-loading muskets recovered at Gettysburg, 90 percent were loaded, almost half with multiple loads! That could not be inadvertent. Further evidence was the low kill rate in face-to-face battles. Like Marshall's assertion about World War II, "Secretly, quietly...these soldiers found themselves to be conscientious objectors who were unable to kill their fellow man." (p. 25) The secrets were well kept, in "a tangled web of individual and cultural forgetfulness, deception and lies tightly woven over thousands of years....the male ego has always justified selective memory, self-deception, and lying [about] two institutions, sex and combat." (p. 31)

* * *

About two percent of soldiers lack the killing inhibition; they score high on measures of "aggressive psychopath." Another one percent in this diagnostic category cannot endure military discipline. Grossman says the adaptable two percent serve well, return to civilian life and function as good citizens.

Artistic imperatives

The other day I took a tour of a prison.  I was interested in the security measures and the very idea of having an institution like a prison, the thought of which seems common enough but the reality of which we rarely get to experience firsthand.  I was even more interested in hearing about some of the more famous inmates and what got them there.

Later that afternoon I was visiting a modern art museum, the type that has a few key pieces to bring in the gray haired and the tourists but prides itself on also presenting a lot of fresh talent.  The diversity of the types and style reminded me that anything can be looked at from an aesthetic perspective.  The context of seeing these works in the museum made me look at the art, even the unfamiliar and nonuser friendly art, in a way that invited me to appreciate the small aesthetic choices that the artist made, whereas the context of the prison invited me to distance myself from the actions that led the prisoners to their sojourn there.

I had this odd epiphany in the museum that, particularly for some of the more gruesome and "senseless" crimes (like serial killing) that may seem to unfathomable to most people, there is a certain aestheticism and set of choices that is not unlike the art.  It reminded me of some of my own fantasies about slitting someone's throat, and how if I were a killer, I could imagine myself really enjoying exploring the nuances of this particular way to kill, in all of its infinite variations.  I could see how someone could devote their entire life to this exploration and feel quite fulfilled -- how some might actually feel compelled, either by the beauty of the art form or by the need for self expression in a particular way, to continually seek out this cathartic release of truth in concrete form.

Is the imperative that a killer often feels to kill in a particular way and a particular type of person any different than the artists' need to express himself in a very different, but similarly particular way?

I had never thought of killing that way, but now that I have it makes complete sense that serial killers will get apprentices, or imitators, or plain fans, just like artists.  It suddenly became clear to me that many people kill not because it is bad or good, deviant or heroic, but just because it is beautiful.  Even the way that formal justice has historically been enacted in the form of torture and capital punishment suggests a certain flair for creativity and desire for expression.  It's a shame that formal justice has become more sterile recently, for the punishers and the punished, at least in western society.  It is becoming a lost art.  

Natural born killer?

A reader sent me this "military essay on sociopaths and their utility," specifically the disparate impact that sociopathic soldiers have in a time of war:

A natural killer is a person who has a predisposition to kill—he enjoys combat and feels little or no remorse about killing the enemy. These men have existed throughout the history of warfare, and their feats have often been hailed as heroic. They constitute less than 4 percent of the force, yet some studies show that they do almost half of the killing. These men rarely distinguish themselves before the moment arrives to pull the trigger. It is only after the smoke has cleared that the full impact of their accomplishment is seen. It is important to identify natural killers before combat, because these soldiers are both a vital asset and a potential liability—correctly positioning them in a unit can turn the tide of battle. To better understand the importance of identifying these soldiers, one should understand what makes soldiers kill, the characteristics of natural killers and their battlefield capabilities and limitations.
***
A temperament for killing exists among some human beings. Marshall, in identifying the battlefield fighters, said, "the same names continued to reappear as having taken the initiative, and relatively few fresh names were added to the list on any day." A post-World War II study by R. L. Swank and W. E. Marchand proposed that 2 percent of soldiers were "aggressive psychopaths" who did not suffer from the normal remorse or trauma associated with killing. I use the word suffer because when the job of the soldier is to kill, those fettered by their conscience are suffering while doing their job. We tend to shun the concept of the willing killer because it offends our kinder sensibilities, but a controlled psychopath is an asset on the killing fields. Those who possess such a temperament are natural killers and many have served this country well. The problem lies in identifying these individuals and positioning them where they can be most effective.

How to identify them?


The natural killer is most likely not a first-born son. Later sons are generally more aggressive and have less fear or anxiety in dangerous situations. An Israeli Defense Force study of its officers from 1961 to 1966 showed that "first borns" were more anxious than "later borns" and that they generally sought less dangerous positions in the military. Later borns were more likely to volunteer for combat and had a better chance of encountering terrorists on patrols. A study of Korean War fighter plane aces found that first borns engaged the enemy less and were more anxious about flying. Family position also seems to relate to assassins. Almost all American assassins have been later sons—John Wilkes Booth, Charles Giteau and Lee Harvey Oswald, to name three.15 Later borns, by virtue of being routinely dominated by their siblings, ultimately feel less fear during stressful situations. They also feel the need to prove their worth over their siblings and more quickly accept dangerous challenges.

A natural killer has been a fighter for much of his life. Frequent fighting as a child does not mean the individual was a bully. Rather, he chose to respond to stressful situations with aggression. Arthur J. Dollard concluded that aggression is the result of frustration and this is a normal human reaction. The sociopath, also referred to as the undercontrolled aggressive personality type, has low internal controls against violence and will resort to aggressive behavior unless constrained by rigid external controls. Such a person can be conditioned to not respond to frustration with external aggression. Thus, if frustrated by a Drill Sergeant’s control, the undercontrolled personality type will refrain from direct aggression and look for another target for his aggression. The military provides ample displacement outlets for this aggression in the form of physical training, field maneuvers and weapons ranges. It is the perfect environment for a sociopath to excel.

The natural killer is an aggressive athlete whose physical makeup allows him to excel at contact sports. Combative sports provide long-term training in aggression while acting as a short-term catharsis or safety valve for aggressive individuals.19 An Army-funded study of Korean War veterans discerned differences in the characteristics of fighters—those who took aggressive action in combat—versus nonfighters—those who were hysterical or nonresponsive in combat. This study, conducted by the Human Resources Research Office (HumRRO), concluded that the fighters had been more active in contact sports such as football, boxing or hockey. It also concluded that fighters had a high masculinity factor or outdoors adventurousness about them. Their body types were larger; on average they were an inch taller and eight pounds heavier than the nonfighters. They were rugged individuals who had channeled their aggressions through contact sports.

Another discriminator for identifying natural killers is their socio-economic background. Natural killers usually come from a middle or upper class background. The volunteer military has had the luxury to pick and choose those who will be allowed into the service, and we exclude those with criminal records. Sociopaths follow a "cheater strategy" to obtain what they want. The lack of a social conscience allows the sociopath to cheat without remorse. Consequently, those who find themselves in the economically disadvantaged lower class will resort to crime unless placed in a highly controlled environment. In other words, a sociopath from a depressed economic background will most likely have a criminal record, and under today’s standards, he would not be able to enter the military. Thus, natural killers in the US military will most likely come from a middle or upper class background.

Sociopaths are generally extroverts. One reason for this is the inheritance of a nervous system that is relatively insensitive to low levels of stimulation. Individuals with this physiotype tend to be extroverted. They also have lower than average levels of adrenaline and seek experiences to heighten this. Extroverts and sociopaths are less affected by threats of pain or punishment, and they have greater tolerance of actual pain or punishment. Both sociopaths and extroverts will approach a situation that most people will avoid. These factors were confirmed by the HumRRO study conclusion that fighters were extroverted, spontaneous and relatively free from anxiety.

The natural killer has above-average intelligence. Like sociopaths with no economic resources, those without above-average intelligence end up in jail. Therefore, sociopaths in our military are usually intelligent. The HumRRO study found that the intelligence quotient (IQ) of fighters was, on average, 13 points higher than nonfighters’. The study subjects were all infantrymen and the mean group IQ was only 85, 15 points below the national average of 100. This indicated that less intelligent men were sent forward to fight, but within that group, the more intelligent ones were better fighters.

Additionally, the natural killer has a caustic sense of humor that relies on sharp wit and biting sarcasm. Such hostile humor acts as a tension-discharger, a relief valve. While we normally associate humor with friendly behavior, laughter itself is a primarily aggressive behavior. Laughter is usually directed at someone and is infectious, with the unspoken agreement being to "join in or not be part of the group." With aggression as the underlying theme, the natural killer enjoys humor.


Sound like anyone you know?

Mormon teen killer

A reader sent me this link to the recent sentencing of an 18 year old Mormon girl who as a 14 year old killed a nine year old neighbor.  At first I was a skeptic about her being a sociopath.  Maybe she is just a weird teenager who got caught up in the wrong crowd and started listening to Blood on the Dance Floor or something.  Ha.

But then I read the part about how she journaled about it:

During her two-day sentencing hearing, prosecutors referred repeatedly to an entry Bustamante wrote in her journal on Oct. 21, 2009 — the night of Elizabeth's death — in which she admitted to having just killed someone.

"I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they're dead," Bustamante wrote in her diary, which was read in court by a handwriting expert. "I don't know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the 'ohmygawd I can't do this' feeling, it's pretty enjoyable. I'm kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now...lol."

Bustamante then left for a youth dance at a Mormon church her family attended while hundreds of volunteers began a two-day hunt for the dead girl. Although she initially lied to authorities about Elizabeth's whereabouts, Bustamante eventually confessed to police and led them to Elizabeth's leaf-covered shallow grave.

"I gotta go to church now"?  Hm.  I'm so curious to hear her opinion on religion.  And she's female.  Such an interesting story.  

Happy sabbath Christians!