Jessica's Evil Psychology

Hi Professor Navara,

Welcome to my final learning journal blog post.

I would first like to begin by thanking you for being a fantastic professor throughout this semester. I think you offered a great balance between discussant and critique during our seminars, and you knew when to take a step back and let the rest of the class talk.

During our first seminar, we tossed around different ideas of evil and what we thought evil entailed. We found that there are three realms that determine if an act is evil, which include the eye of the beholder, the individual, and the society in which the act occurs. As a class, we thought that evil was something that was done with the intent of hurting someone or violating someone’s rights. This was usually discussed in the context of rape or murder, and I think this is because these are acts we don’t imagine ourselves committing. With my background in law courses, I started to mentally file our discussions into a mens rea and an actus reus – the criminal intent and the criminal act. As I took notes in our discussions, my notes looked more like scribbles of arrows and thought bubbles than actual class notes.

Unfortunately, this semester taught me a little bit more than I bargained for when I suddenly lost one of my best friends in the beginning of March in a fatal car accident. This really solidified my idea that evil doesn’t have to have an intention behind it, as (to our knowledge) the man who hit my best friend did not intend to kill her. This removed the mens rea part of my definition. It also taught me that evil acts have a lot of repercussions, and in the case of my best friend, these repercussions were mainly emotional. The evil doesn’t stop at the event, and I don’t think that we covered that in our class. We never spoke about the fact that the effects of evil ripple out beyond the act.

I also learned that there are more forms of evil than I initially thought. When we started the class, the conversations mostly revolved around rape and murder because those are the crimes that come to mind when we think “evil”. After listening to all of the presentations over the semester and reading everyone’s blogs, I truly saw that there are so many variations of evil. Among my favourites were the presentation on corporate evil, the presentation on the death penalty, and the presentation on the Blue Code of Silence. It really showed me that evil comes in a lot of shapes and forms and that sometimes something as simple as keeping a secret (blue code of silence) is evil. Sometimes evil can be as simple as not doing anything, and just following along, like in a cult situation.

The most important thing to remember is that a lot of things happen in constellation to equal evil. It is not one isolated event or condition that creates evil. While psychopathy is something that increases the likelihood of things that we consider evil, it does not always equal evil. Closer to the beginning of the course when we were reading the assigned books about evil, I think that showed the class that evil is often a social circumstance. In the example of the Nazi’s, we saw that those who were killing the Jewish individuals didn’t often have a choice in the matter. It really demonstrates that evil isn’t solely a psychological thing, it’s an interaction between a bunch of different factors.

So, here I am, trying to come up with a definition that ties up what I’ve learned thus far, and I think I have more questions than I do answers. My questions are more informed, and I have more specific questions, but I’m still left wondering about quite a lot. In summary, if I had to create one single definition of evil, I would say that an evil situation is a constellation of circumstances that causes an event that greatly contradicts a society’s morality. These circumstances can include psychological illness, social arguments, a reward for evil, or escalation, for example. Evil has a lot of moving parts, it is not just one thing. It is composed of the perpetrator’s actions, how the victim reacts, and how the society in which it occurs perceives the act.

Hi readers!

Well, we’ve made it to the last post of the semester! First and foremost, I wanted to thank you for riding with me on this journey of exploring evil. It’s been a pleasure.

Our last assigned reading of the course was Chapter 12 of Roy Baumeister’s book, titled “Why is There Evil?” Great question, Roy! In this chapter, Baumeister explains that evil does not occur in a vacuum, it is a product of social circumstances that happen between people. He then walks us through the 4 root causes of evil: the desire for material gain, the threatened egotism, idealism, and the pursuit of sadistic pleasure. Baumeister also touched on the longstanding debate between nature vs. nurture, and said that it is an interaction of both. Evil roots itself both in human nature and human socialization. He finishes by discussing how hard it is to understand evil, and how mind boggling it is that ordinary people can commit such heinous crimes, all over the world (Baumeister, 1997).

Honestly, I wish we had gotten a chance to talk about these four cornerstones of evil before our classes got cancelled. I think the class would’ve had a fantastic time trying to classify evil acts into those four categories.

Roy Baumeister also touched on the topic of magnitude and banality. He prefaced that a lot of evil acts are not committed by people who are stereotypically evil, and that we are often very surprised by the person who does evil things (Baumeister, 1997). I think we learned this a couple weeks ago during a presentation about the Blue Code of Silence, where police officers cover up their crimes. I think that’s the epitome of surprise evil, because cops are supposed to protect society.

This idea of being surprised by the commission of evil reminded me of one of my podcast episodes that I listened to recently, Crime Junkie. The episode covered the Laci Peterson case, which is the epitome of “I can’t believe the husband did it!” In a nutshell, this young couple that seemed so in love and who were about to have a baby wound up with the wife, Laci, dead and the husband, Scott, in jail for her murder. During the episode, they played voicemails of Scott telling Laci how much he loved her, on top of a lot of testimonials from family that speak to how much Scott and Laci loved each other. Scott was an upstanding citizen, who was preparing to be a dad, or so everyone thought. After further investigation, it is revealed that Scott was having an affair and that he can’t really speak to where he was while Laci was being murdered.  I think they paint the perfect picture of the happy couple that ended up in a completely different situation (Flowers & Prawat, 2017).

I looked into some research on men who kill their wives.  The literature says that a majority of men justified their violence towards their wives by claiming that their wives did not meet the expectation of “a good wife”, or because their wives were disobedient. The consensus among the perpetrators was that their partners were to blame for their abuse (Dobash & Dobash, 2011).  In addition to this, murderers often present themselves as reasonable people who were just pushed to their limits by their “unreasonable” wives (Dobash & Dobash, 2011). To circle back to one of the four root causes of evil, this sounds a lot to me like threatened egotism, where the perpetrator had their confidence threatened and reacted in an evil way, which I believe happened in Scott and Laci’s marriage (Baumeister, 1997).  I don’t think that any of the other root causes suited Scott, but what do you think?

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To recap, in Baumeister’s chapter, he touched on the fact that many of us are unable to predict who commits evil acts and are shocked when someone that seems ordinary commits a crime (Baumeister, 1997). I thought that the case of Laci and Scott Peterson really illustrated this, as Scott was the last person that people in his life thought would commit a crime, let alone kill his wife. In looking at the research, I learned that the wives are often blamed for their murder in situations of intimate partner violence (Dobash & Dobash, 2011), which related to one of the four roots of evil: threatened egotism.

            I’m curious to know, which root of evil do you think is the most evil? Which one do you think is the most justifiable? What is one instance of evil that really shocked you?

References

Baumeister, R. (1997). Evil: Inside human cruelty and violence. New York, NY: W.H. Freemand and Company

Dobash, E. R. & Dobash, R. P. (2011). What were they thinking? Men who murder an intimate partner. Violence Against Women, 17(1), 111-134.

Flowers, A., & Prawat, B. (Producer). (2020, February 17). Crime Junkie [Audio podcast]. https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-laci-peterson/

Hi readers.

Our class time was taken up mostly by presentations this week. Two of them stood out to me, one that looked at police officers who kill individuals on the job without repercussions, and another that looked at the death penalty. The interesting part about these topics is that they don’t necessarily include the intent aspect of evil but they are evil in nature. As a disclaimer, one could make the argument that police officers who kill people intend to do so, but for the purpose of this post, I am going to assume that police officers have the intention of protecting their communities. Similar to this, capital punishment has the purpose of achieving justice and remedying harm, but in a paradox, it takes someone’s life.

I think on the heels of the coronavirus that is being spoken about in the media, I think that those against vaccinations (who I will herein refer to as anti-vaxxers) have the best intentions but end up causing a lot of harm. Part of this is taking misinformation as gospel, and making others ill by not vaccinating themselves or their children.

I stumbled upon an article that was about a four-year-old from Colorado died of the flu. After the child passed away, it was discovered that the boy’s mom, Montoya, was actively against vaccinations (Evelyn, 2020). For some context, this year’s flu season is very severe and has taken 70 lives. 70 isn’t a huge number, but when you take into consideration that it could be prevented, it seems astronomical. The deceased’s mother had received a prescription for the flu shot for her children prior to her son’s death, but refused to fill it, and chose to attempt to treat her son with peppermint oil and herbs (Evelyn, 2020). Doctors prescribed the vaccine after two of her son’s siblings got sick, but after not receiving the vaccine, Montoya’s son came down with a fever that resulted in a seizure (Evelyn, 2020).

I admittedly had some trouble finding an academic article that was relevant to this topic, but I settled on an article about child neglect. Certain instances of child neglect are not intentional, but they end up being some of the most evil. Neglect is defined as an act of parental omission that put children in danger. The research states that while neglect does not always have immediate negative effects on children, it has harmful lasting effects and it is harder to prevent (Friedman & Billick, 2015). The neglect usually occurs when the child’s needs are not understood. This relates to the fact that low parental education is correlated with child neglect (Friedman & Billick, 2015). I think this relates to the Montoya case, where she did not understand her children’s needs, and this was catalyzed by miseducation.

 I have been operating under the assumption that everyone who commits an evil act has at least some kind of sinister mentality, but I was proven wrong during the presentations today. Our class agreed that the intent to cause harm was really common in the commission of evil, but I argue that that isn’t always true. Usually, when a police officer kills someone on duty, the intention wasn’t to murder, it was to protect the community. Regardless, taking a life is cruel. Further, the goal of capital punishment is to achieve justice and bringing remedy to a victim’s family, but it does remove a life.

References

Evelyn, K. (2020, February 7). Advocates blame anti-vaxxers after four-year-old boy dies from flu. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/07/colorado-boy-dies-flu-anti-vaccine-facebook-groups.

Friedman, E., & Billick, S. B. (2015). Unintentional child neglect: Literature review and observational study. Psychiatric Quarterly, 86, 253-259.

Hi everyone!

We had a really interesting set of presentations this week by our classmates that covered: the social media spread of evil, cyberbullying and rape and sexual sadism. This was followed by a very involved discussion that talked about everyone’s perceptions of evil thus far in the course. In the class discussion, we spent time on intent (as this was one of our central aspects of the definition of evil). Further, we spoke about the importance of having information when deciding if something is evil. Sometimes knowing more information about the perpetrator (i.e. if they have a mental illness or are under duress), can make us think they’re less or more evil.

All three of the presentations really resonated with a documentary that I watched last year called Roll, Red, Roll. It had an aspect of rape, of online harassment, and of social media. We also talked about the concept of groupthink in class, where rapists are more likely to commit rape when others are present. This is true in the documentary, as every instance of rape occurred in the context of a party (Devaney, Lake, & Schwartzman, 2018).

Roll, Red, Roll is a documentary about a set of three girls who were raped in unrelated events in the small college town of Steubenville, Ohio. These three high school aged girls (who remain anonymous in the film) were raped by a few of their male classmates on three separate instances (Devaney, Lake, & Schwartzman, 2018). During the assaults, photos were taken and then circulated through the high school and the community. Obviously, the girls did not consent to the photos as they were very degrading. As it is a small town, news travels fast around social media and the girls were blamed for their assaults. The rapists are small town football stars and so everyone is reluctant to blame them, in a “boys will be boys” mentality (Horton, 2019).

The responses to the rape include…

• “I have no sympathy for whores”
• “We’re hitting it for real”
• “Sloppy” (Horton, 2019)

This documentary and the presentation we saw in class today taught me that rapists can rape for a number of different reasons, the motivation is not always to cause direct harm to victims. This intent, critical to the definition of evil, is very important to understand. The boys in Roll, Red, Roll were raping to show off to their friends. In the class presentation, we saw that men often rape because of their lack of self-esteem or for revenge purposes.

Looking at further research, it seems like there are different classifications of rapists, all who rape with a different intent in mind. We have disadvantaged men, who rape because they do not receive sex otherwise. Specialized rapists are aroused by violent sexual stimuli (this may relate to the BDSM we were discussing during Hayley’s presentation) (McKibbin, Shackelford, Goetz, & Starratt, 2008). Partner rapists rape their partner because they are scared of being cheated on or being abandoned, while opportunistic rapists seek out susceptible women. High-mating-effort rapists are those who seek dominancy, have a high self-esteem, and are most likely to be psychopaths (McKibbin et al., 2008).

In summary, I hope that the readers of this blog pay special attention to the intent that precedes an evil act. It’s important to understand why someone is doing something, and what the context is. I also think special attention should be paid to how certain forms of evil, such as the ones discussed in our class presentations, can interact with each other. Roll, Red, Roll is a great example of how social media can spread evil, and how cyberbullying and rape can harm people.

References

Devaney, J. (Producer), Lake, S. (Producer), & Schwartzman, N. (Director). (2018). Roll, Red, Roll [Motion Picture]. USA: Sunset Park Pictures.

Horton, A. (2019, April).  Roll Red Roll: behind the chilling documentary on high school rape. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/09/roll-red-roll-behind-the-chilling-documentary-on-high-school

McKibbin, W., Shackelford, T., Goetz, A., & Starratt, V. (2008). Why do men rape? An evolutionary psychological perspective. Review of General Psychology, 12(1), 86-97.

This week our conversation started with a very interesting presentation by a classmate about corporate evil, which then bled into a conversation about The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo (Zimbardo, 2007). In a nutshell, the presentation spoke about how certain leaders of corporations make “evil” decisions which are then followed by the rest of the company/corporation. The presentation covered many reasons for these evil decisions, such as ego-depletion, but something else stuck out to me.

In both the presentation and The Lucifer Effect, there was a leader who was making awful decisions, but there were also followers who did not question the leader. This situation is parallel to the bystander effect, where people participate in activities or fail to stand up to the leader, allowing the evil situation to continue. We saw this in The Lucifer Effect which describes the Stanford Prison Experiment, where there were a select few correctional officers who were particularly harsh on the prisoners, and there were others who failed to say anything and followed along (Zimbardo, 2007). I think both situations are equally bad. While one party is instigating the harmful behaviour, and the other is allowing the behaviour to continue.

I related this issue to an episode of a podcast that I listened to earlier in the week. The podcast is called Crime Junkie, and they discuss murder and disappearance cases in weekly episodes. This week, the victim was a young black girl who disappeared years ago and is still missing, Relisha Rudd. She was only 8 years old when she went missing and it took 18 days for anyone to raise concern that she was missing! Even when it was realized that Relisha was missing, search efforts were few and far between, and she has yet to be found.

While I was listening to it, I kept wondering why the police never tried to look for Relisha. The lead detective and constable were the ones that failed to organize searches, but Relisha’s mom, her grandmother, her teachers, and the other police officers all failed to intervene when there was clearly a reason for intervention.

I found an interesting blog post that discussed The Toxic Triangle, which is composed of destructive leaders, susceptible followers and conductive environments (Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2007). I focused on the part of the article where susceptible followers were discussed, since that was the focus of our class discussion. The authors suggest that followers are so willing to obey a leader because they value security and group membership above all else. Along with this, we have a natural tendency to imitate higher-status individuals and to follow group norms, even if it contradicts our morals (Padilla et al., 2007). The authors goes on to say that there are two types of followers: conformers and colluders. Conformers comply with the leader’s destructive behaviour (like in Relisha’s case), and colluders actively participate in the leader’s agenda (like in the Stanford Prison Experiment) (Padilla, 2007). This made a lot of sense to me, and provided me with a little more clarity.

I think of all of this is understandable. People just want to fit into a group and to follow behind powerful leaders. This becomes problematic when the leaders are making immoral decisions and the followers are clouded by their need to conform to a group.

To summarize, leaders have an advantage as followers have a tendency to comply to their demands. This can be disastrous when the leader has a lack of morals and places their own needs above others. We saw this in Zimbardo’s book, our class presentation, and the Relisha Rudd case. These actions were explained by Padilla, Hogan and Kaiser, who discussed the triad of toxicity, and how followers can succumb to evil leaders.

References

Flowers, A., & Prawat, B. (Producer). (2020, February 17). Crime Junkie [Audio podcast]. https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-relisha-rudd-unique-harris/

Padilla, A., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 176-194.

Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect. New York, NY: Random House.

Hi readers!

This week’s blog post is going to focus on readings from the book The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo, which details the proceedings of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

In reading Zimbardo’s account of how the prisoners (who were not actually guilty of anything) and the jail guards took on their roles (Zimbardo, 2007), I got curious about the guards’ and the prisoners’ motivations. Specifically, it fascinated me how it was seemingly easy for the jail guards to become brutal, bossy and rude, and the prisoners to accept it. The distraught prisoners were made to look unanimous and were only called by their numbers in a dehumanizing way (Zimbardo, 2007). While it was an experiment, these occurrences are not a far cry from what occurs in prisons.

I recently started watching The Outsider, which is a TV adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (I highly recommend it!). In the show, Terry Maitland is accused of murdering a young, local boy, and is taken to a prison while he awaits a trial. Despite the fact that Terry maintains his innocence and there is quite a lot of exculpatory evidence, he still faces discrimination, threats and violence in prison. Another man in the same prison was accused of a similar crime ended up with his throat being split (Bernstein & Bateman, 2012). As an outside viewer, it was easy for me to think that Terry’s fellow inmates should leave him alone because I think that he has a likeable personality and that he’s innocent, but they have no prior knowledge of Terry. I do not understand why individuals who ended up in prisons would want to cause more trouble.

I looked at research that studies prison violence and found a lot of information that made sense to me. It became very clear to me that prisoners are at a huge risk of multiple forms of violent victimization. Here are the stats:

• 15% of inmates under the age of 21 were victims of violent attacks

• 12.5% of inmates have been assaulted at least once

• 1/3 of inmates have been threatened with violence (Worrall & Morris, 2012)

There are multiple perspectives that attempt to explain prison violence, however the deprivation perspective stood out to me. Being a prisoner causes one to behave in ways that are parallel with their conditions; not only being deprived of freedom but being confined (Worrall & Morris, 2012). It made sense that when individuals feel that they are backed into a corner, they do unimaginable things. In the context of evil, the majority of evil acts do not occur without some sort of precedent. Overcrowding in prisons was also correlated with violence, worsening the confinement that prisoners experience (Worrall & Morris, 2012).

In summary, I found the ease at which the participants of the Stanford Prison experiment took on their roles shocking. Obviously, I have learned about the experiment before, but it was surprising to me how the guards overlooked the need to be a decent person, even when dealing with “bad” individuals (Zimbardo, 2007). The Stanford Prison experiment is slightly outdated, and I had The Outsider in mind, so I looked into how modern prison violence could fit into this narrative. Researchers suggest that prison overcrowding and deprivation of freedom can make prisoners violent, suggesting that the violence is a product of the prison conditions (Worrall & Morris, 2012).

Do you think that prisoners are exceptionally violent because it is a collection of criminals or because of the conditions of being confined in prison?

References

Bernstein, A. (Director), & Bateman, J. (Director). (2020). The Outsider [Television series]. HBO.

Worrall, J. L., & Morris, R. G. (2012). Prison gang integration and inmate violence. Journal of Criminal Justice, 40(5), 425-432.

Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect. New York, NY: Random House.

Hello everyone!

After a very thought-provoking presentation by a classmate, most of our class discussion revolved around eugenics this week. The presentation focused on using psychedelics to remove violent tendencies from a person. Afterwards, different opinions regarding biologically influencing someone to be less evil were thrown around the room. It was compared to things like prescription medication (such as those used for depression and ADHD) and lobotomies as attempts to change someone. In my opinion, biologically altering someone to be less evil and violent is an infringement on their person. I compare it to giving someone a lobotomy on a smaller scale, whereas by giving someone psychedelics, you are not only affecting their evil habits in isolation. You’re also affecting their personality, their thoughts and their decisions.

I found this similar to the readings, where Roy Baumeister talks about blurred lines being a source of evil. He writes that we set boundaries for ourselves but when we cross those lines, or don’t honour those limits, then that’s when evil can ensue. I think that relates to this conversation, where we want to protect people, but at what cost? Is altering someone’s brain crossing the line?

If you could take the evil out of someone, would you? The issue with this, is that evil is quite often hard to spot. But, if you wanted to take the sadness from someone, how far would you go?

Recently, a trailer came out for a documentary on an infamous but interesting murder and I dove into the research.

In 2014, Michelle encouraged and pressured her boyfriend to kill himself through texts and phone calls. Initially, it was thought to be a self-guided suicide when they found Conrad dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his truck. Hundreds of texts and calls surfaced after Conrad’s death between the couple in which Michelle comforted him and told him he should end his life. The most alarming of all was the call where Conrad said he stepped out of the truck, but Michelle instructed him, “to get back in.” Both teens struggled with depression, and Conrad had a history of suicide attempts prior to this one (Truesdell, 2020).

Was Michelle really just trying to help Conrad?

I chose to look at this incident from a murder-suicide perspective, because I don’t think that this case really fits like a mercy killing. What do you think? Could it be possible that Michelle intended to kill herself afterwards?

When I looked into the literature on suicides and homicides and how they relate, I found that Michelle’s homicide/Conrad’s suicide don’t fit the usual narrative. Homicides are not usually committed by someone with a mental illness, and they usually ensue after an argument of some kind, usually fights about drugs, finances, or romantic affairs. While 76% of suicides are committed by men, rates are highest in those aged 85 or higher (Podlogar, Gai, Schneider, Hagan & Joiner, 2018), which does not fit with Conrad. Interestingly, those who commit murder-suicide tend to be younger and have a history of interpersonal conflict (Podlogar et al., 2018).

In terms of psychological motivation behind murder-suicide, perpetrators integrate both an internalized and externalized sense of identity and include others in their suicide (Podlogar, 2018). Maybe this is what Michelle was doing, reflecting her own hardships onto Conrad. Further, murder-suicide is usually predicted by mental illness that can be catalyzed by the need for dominance, control and narcissism (Podlogar, 2018). Michelle telling Conrad to get back in the truck and ordering him to end his life reflects dominance to me.

For all of my fellow true crime documentary fans, this one is called I Love You, Now Die.

References

Podlogar, M. C., Gai, A. R., Schneider, M., Hagan, C. R., & Joiner, T. E. (2018). Advancing the prediction and prevention of murder-suicide. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 10(3), 223-234.

Truesdell, J. (2020, January 15). Michelle Carter will be released from prison next week after 15-month sentence in suicide-text case. Retrieved from https://people.com/crime/michelle-carter-suicide-text-case-release-prison-next-week/

Hi readers!

Our class discussion was a little bit short, but it centred around different types of debatable evil. We touched on three topics that really stood out to me, sadism in BDSM, religion and psychological manipulation. All of the aforementioned topics have the potential to become evil. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about sadism, and how it sometimes manifests as a sexual preference and how it sometimes ends up causing true harm to others.

The topic was first brought to my attention while I was reading Baumeister’s book, Evil: Inside Violence and Cruelty. Baumeister (1997) briefly explored sadism, and how some enjoy inflicting pain on others. He then began to explain how certain individuals automatically laugh when they are causing pain as a form of release to avoid overwhelming their brain.

Take a trip back to 2011 with me. Do you remember the 50 Shades of Grey series? It’s one of those books that’s like a bad car accident where it’s so bad but you can’t look away. It is going to be the topic of my blog post.

For those of you who did not read it, Fifty Shades of Grey tells the story of Christian and Ana. Christian is very into BDSM, as he was introduced to it by someone earlier in his life. After some convincing, he and Ana then embark on a relationship with BDSM heavily sprinkled throughout the book. The common notion that is spoken about in the book is that if Christian had not found BDSM, then he would have wound up in jail.

Similar to the thoughts I had while I was reading Beaumeister’s book, I began wondering why Christian did not engage in further and more severe sadism, or whether he would have become a sadist if he had not been introduced to BDSM. I also began to wonder if the author was correct in saying that BDSM was enough to keep those with sadistic thoughts out of jail and to keep others safe.

Clinical Sadism

 The author describes sadism as impulsively deriving pleasure from the control, domination or suffering of others. Sexual sadism is a tier sadism, which is characterized by becoming aroused by the psychological or physical suffering of someone else (Meloy, 1997). According to research, criminal sexual sadism is not usually caused by adverse childhoods, physical abuse or sexual abuse as children. 86% of sexually sadistic murderers had antisocial personality disorder, and usually beat, raped, bound and forced acts onto the victim (Meloy, 1997).

 But why do only some sadists kill?

 I found this answer in an article that looked at de-pathologizing sexual sadism. There is a difference between paraphilia, which are the sexual behaviours, and Paraphilic Disorders, the mental disorders (Wright, 2010). Wright (2010) writes that the consensual paraphilias are much different and much healthier than those with a Paraphilic Disorder. The largest difference between the two is that Sexual Sadism Disorder is marked by internal and clinically significant distress, because desires do not align with societal standards. I was surprised to learn that the majority of individuals who practice BDSM were misdiagnosed with a mental disorder, such as sexual sadism disorder. Contradictory to this, Paraphilic Disorders are very rare, and are usually limited to forensic populations (Wright, 2010). Sexual Sadism Disorder requires the paraphilia, but in the context of abducted or captured victims who are being psychologically and physically tortured (Meloy, 1997). It was also found that psychopathy and Sexual Sadism Disorder are significantly positively correlated, meaning that they usually occur together (Meloy, 1997).

This answered most of my questions but failed to answer others. I’m still stuck wondering what catalyzes the behaviours to amount to a Paraphilic Disorder in certain cases, or whether there are those who engage in paraphilia who have the potential to amount to more evil acts.

To sum up, I had a lot of questions about the parallels between sexual sadism and psychopathic sadism. I wanted to explore what the difference was between someone who had a sexual preference and someone who extended it to harming others who did not consent, and whether having a consenting partner could act as a preventative measure. Through research, I found out that there were some big differences between paraphilia and Paraphilic Disorder, and that psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder are actually involved in the equation. As a class we had come to the conclusion that harming someone else for your own benefit was a crucial aspect of evil, but I’m not so sure anymore.

Thanks for sticking around to listen to me ponder evil, and why some acts become evil and others don’t.

References

Baumeister, R. (1997). Evil: inside human cruelty and violence. New York: W. H. Freeman.

James, E. L. (2012). Fifty shades of Grey. New York: Vintage Books.

Meloy, J. (1997). The psychology of wickedness: Psychopathy and sadism. Psychiatric Annals, 27(9), 630-633.

Wright, S. (2010). Depathologizing consensual sexual sadism, sexual masochism, transvestic fetishism, and fetishism. Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 39, 1229-1230.

Hi again! Welcome back to my psychology of evil blog.

In this blog post I will be talking about mental illness, Asperger’s and Autism. I wanted to write a little disclaimer about these things. I am in no way saying that everyone who is Autistic, has Asperger’s or any mental health deficit is going to commit a crime or do something evil. When I classify people as “normal”, I don’t mean to say that those with the aforementioned conditions are abnormal, but I did not want to classify them as “unhealthy”. I’m just looking to draw some connections from the biology in extreme cases with the utmost respect.

This week in class the discussion topic focused a lot on the levels of empathy that were discussed in Simon Baren-Cohen’s book, The Science of Evil. These different levels of empathy do a good job of illustrating who is most likely to have little empathy and what their thought process is. The conversation led us to talk about those who are biologically prone to committing evil acts. Simon Baren-Cohen discussed both Asperger’s and Autism, and how individuals with Asperger’s and Autism Spectrum Disorder have a diminished capacity to feel empathetic. These individuals do have the cognitive understanding of empathy, but struggle to identify what others are feeling (Baren-Cohen, 2011).

With a background in forensic science, I obviously got thinking about the law and court system. This got me thinking how we can fairly judge those who have a predisposition to feel less empathy. Arguably, the rest of us have more control over our actions because we can identify social cues, correctly perceive others’ emotions and act accordingly. Others do not have this social advantage, and can be seen as 100% responsible. How do you attribute guilt to someone who is not of a sound mind when doing something? They most likely did not follow the same cognitive thought process that we would that would lead them to judge that particular act as wrong. They would not possess the mens rea (the criminal intent) to commit the crime, for various reasons. Maybe they did not perceive another’s emotions as we would, or maybe they saw that act as morally correct.

This can be extended to mental illness as well. Those who suffer from borderline personality disorder or schizophrenia, for example, may be at a higher risk to commit a crime. This is because they have an emotional impairment that can cause them to act erratically or fail to comprehend their behaviour. Again, I’m really wondering where the line is drawn between responsible and NCR (not criminally responsible). Of course, context matters, and we need to consider the tangible occurrences and the thought process of the perpetrator. These thoughts are very parallel with the ones that I’ve been struggling with throughout the whole course.

Serena & Sophia

            Serena (3 y/o) and Sophia (1 y/o) were drowned in their bathtub by their mom, Elaine Campione, who was in a custody battle with their father. Their dad, Leo, was facing assault charges at the time for a domestic dispute. Leo had been threatening to take the girls away from Elaine. After she drowned them, Elaine put them in pyjamas and posed them on her bed holding hands, and then overdosed on pills before calling 911. In the hospital, she said she didn’t remember what happened to her daughters.

            Again, I would like to highlight the context here. There is no doubt that Elaine was not right in drowning her daughters, but she also was diagnosed with psychosis and was experiencing extensive life stress. This is an instance where an individual had a clear biological predisposition to commit an evil act, and it caused her to act in a way that does not follow a normal cognitive process. It can be assumed that she did not completely understand what she was doing. When we ask ourselves if we would do this, the answer is clearly no.

Not Criminally Responsible

            As Elaine’s offence occurred in Barrie, Ontario, I thought I would look into some research from Canada. The largest number of offences that are committed by someone who is deemed NCRMD (not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder) is assaults (26%), followed by threats (25%), offences that cause death (11%) and then property offences (10%). There were other offences, but they only accounted for a small amount of the offense committed (Crocker, Nicholls, Seto, Charette, Cote, & Caulet, 2015).

            Approximately one half of individuals who are found NCRMD have had no prior contact with the criminal justice system. The majority of individuals who are found NCRMD were under the care of a psychiatrist. The victims of these crimes were mostly males, with family members and partners being targeted most often (Crocker et al., 2015). This description partially describes Elaine in that she hurt her children.

            Canadian law states that an individual who is accused of a crime must possess the capacity to understand their actions in order to be found guilty of an offence (Crocker et al., 2015). This piece of legislation can apply to those with Autism or Asperger’s, those with psychosis, or those with Borderline Personality Disorder. If someone has an issue regulating their emotions or feeling empathy and understanding empathy, this may apply to them.  

            But can we really blame someone if they do not understand their behaviour?

References

Crocker, A. G., Nicholls, T. L., Seto, M. C., Charette, Y., Cote, G., & Caulet, M. (2015). The national trajectory project of individuals for criminally responsible on account of mental disorder in Canada. Part 2: The people behind the label. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 60(3), 106-116).

Ramsay, J. (2019). Barrie mother who drowned her children approved for escorted prison leave. Simcoe.  https://www.simcoe.com/news-story/9622313-barrie-mother-who-drowned-her-children-approved-for-escorted-prison-leave/

Welcome back!

Hi readers! I hope everyone had a good week.

This week we were asked to read the first chapters of a couple of books concerning themselves with evil (The Science of Evil by Simon Baren-Cohen, Evil by Roy Baumeister and The Lucier Effect by Philip Zimbardo). These books all discussed a different aspect of evil, save for the fact that they all used awful, violent and hateful acts to illustrate evil. During our class discussion, we spent quite a bit of time discussing where the onus for an evil act lies. Some of us thought that the social circumstances surrounding an evil act were to blame, while others wanted to blame the individual entirely.

In my opinion, there are TWO sets of circumstances that can set the stage for an evil act. There is either 1) an evil act, 2) an evil intention (or both) and A) an evil social setting, and B) an evil person who should take all of the responsibility (or both). One may commit an act of evil, but may not have the intention to cause harm (i.e. killing someone in a car accident unintentionally), or they can have the intention to hurt someone but fail to do anything. Similarly, someone can find themselves completely responsible for the evil act, or they may just be a victim of social circumstances, or both. For example, the case of Josef Fritzl stuck out to me from the readings. He lived in Austria and kidnapped his daughter, keeping her captive in their basement for 24 years. Throughout this time, he raped her repeatedly and got her pregnant, which resulted in 7 children (Baron-Cohen, 2011). Josef is one of the individuals who committed an evil act with an evil intention. He selfishly wanted someone who he could rape for his own benefit. His acts of kidnapping, imprisonment and rape were thought out and planned, they were not a result of adverse social circumstances. I think that the purest form of evil is someone who takes it upon themselves to commit an evil act with complete intention.

Our class discussion got me thinking a lot about instances where evil acts could be understood and even forgiven. I tend to lean towards forgiving those who committed an evil act without intention, or those who fall victim to evil social circumstances. It is for this reason that I picked a CBC article that covered the case of a women who killed her husband. The only reason why I think that this murder is justifiable is because the husband was physically and mentally abusing his wife.

Debbie Doonanco

            I will post the link so you can read the article, however, I will provide a small summary of the case to give my argument some context. The couple, Debbie and Kevin, lived in Alberta at the time of Kevin’s murder. During the weeks and months leading up to the homicide, Kevin was using illicit drugs and was being physically abusive towards Debbie. It culminated on May 25^th when Kevin, who was high on drugs, loaded a gun and fired a shot at Debbie. He was threatening to kill her and her parents if she ever reported the abuse, and so in an act of what I can assume is self-defence, Debbie shot Kevin. Debbie was subsequently charged with shooting Kevin twice and then burning his remains.

I don’t condone what Debbie did, but it is easy for me to understand her mentality. Murdering Kevin was an act of defense on behalf of herself and her parents. It is likely that if Kevin had not been abusive, he would still be alive. Debbie found herself in a set of evil social circumstances.

Who do you think is more evil?

Interviews with Women Convicted of Murder: Battered Women Syndrome Revised

            In order to help me gauge whether Debbie should be held accountable, I searched for some psychological research that looked at women who kill their intimate partners.

For some context, I learned that women are more likely to be killed by their intimate partner than all other types of assailants combined (Stevens, 1999). This last statistic makes me wonder why women are always warned to run from evil strangers, yet the really evil ones are those that we’re closest with.

The research also states that it’s not uncommon for women convicted of killing their husbands to experience brutal and repeated assaults, failures to escape, exposure to alcohol or drug abuse, and death threats prior to the murder (Stevens, 1999). Common emotional feelings felt by battered wives include depression, terror, isolation, low self-esteem, and helplessness. Convicted wives who are guilty of their husband’s murder explain that they killed their male partners in an attempt to avoid further abuse. In summary, homicide is often used as a last resort mechanism of self-defence to avoid further victimization (Stevens, 1999).

This research illustrated something I saw a lot throughout the readings; people who kill in an act of self-defence. It was clear that in these stories, these individuals would be completely innocent if they found themselves in a different set of circumstances. In his book, Baron-Cohen writes about the rape of Mirindi Euprazi from the Congo. Mirindi’s son was forced to rape her by rebels who were threatening death (Baron-Cohen, 2011). This case is similar to Debbie’s as both of them committed unthinkable acts but were just trying to escape their own demise. Can we truly blame them and call their acts evil?

References

Baron-Cohen, S. (2011). The Science of Evil. Philadelphia: Basic Books.

Johnston, J. (2016, October 19). Women on trial for murder had battered wife syndrome, lawyer says. CBC News. Retrived from  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/woman-on-trial-for-murder-had-battered-wife-syndrome-lawyer-says-1.3811274

Stevens, D. J. (1999). Interviews with women convicted of murder: Battered women syndrome revisited. International Review of Victimology, 6, 117-135.