NATURE vs NURTURE: What CAUSES Criminality and VIOLENCE? | FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST (Dr Das)
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful video, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. Sohom Das explores the age-old debate of nature versus nurture in criminality, focusing on violence. Through case examples and research summaries, he delves into environmental factors like poverty and abuse, alongside genetic influences. Dr. Das also discusses the role of mental health, personality traits, and social theories, providing a balanced view that crime is influenced by both innate predispositions and life circumstances.
Takeaways
- 🕵️♂️ Dr. Sohom Das is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist who specializes in assessing mentally disordered offenders.
- 🌟 The age-old debate of nature versus nurture in criminality is tackled, with a focus on environmental and genetic factors leading to violence.
- 📊 A meta-analysis of 24 studies suggests that the variance of violence is approximately 50% genetic and 50% environmental.
- 👥 Environmental factors often include poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence, and being a victim of physical or sexual abuse.
- 🧬 Genetic factors such as the 'warrior gene' (monoamine oxidase inhibitor) can influence aggression due to the buildup of neurotransmitters.
- 🏥 Dr. Das shares case examples, including a young woman with no environmental factors whose mental illness led to a tragic crime.
- 🌐 Criminogenic peers and the modeling of criminal behavior are significant environmental influences on offending.
- 💰 Poverty and lack of educational opportunities can lead individuals to turn towards crime as a means of survival.
- 🧠 Mental health issues, such as psychosis and delusions, can directly result in criminal behavior, as seen in some of Dr. Das's cases.
- 🍷 Substance abuse, including alcohol, can disinhibit individuals, leading to impulsive and aggressive actions without considering consequences.
- 🤝 Social theories, including risk versus benefit, strain theory, and social control theory, help explain the motivations behind criminal behavior.
Q & A
What is the main topic of the video script by Dr. Sohom Das?
-The main topic of the video script is the age-old question of nature versus nurture in the context of criminality and violence.
What does Dr. Das do for a living?
-Dr. Das is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist who assesses mentally disordered offenders.
What are some common environmental factors Dr. Das has observed in the majority of his patients?
-Common environmental factors include poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence, and being victims of physical or sexual abuse.
Can you provide an example of a case where environmental factors were not present, as mentioned by Dr. Das?
-One example is the case of an 18-year-old girl with no history of antisocial behavior or criminality in her family, who became psychotic and tragically killed her two-year-old nephew.
What is a meta-analysis and how does it relate to the research on the variance of violence?
-A meta-analysis is a statistical method that combines the results of multiple studies. In the context of violence, a meta-analysis of 24 studies concluded that the variance of violence is about 50% genetic and 50% environmental.
What are some of the environmental factors that can lead to violence according to Dr. Das?
-Some environmental factors include having criminogenic peers, poverty, lack of educational opportunities, witnessing or being a victim of abuse, and substance abuse.
What is the significance of the 'warrior gene' mentioned by Dr. Das?
-The 'warrior gene' refers to a gene related to monoamine oxidase, an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters involved in impulse control and mood. A deficiency in this enzyme can lead to an accumulation of these neurotransmitters, which is associated with aggression.
What are some social theories introduced by Dr. Das that explain criminal behavior?
-Dr. Das introduces theories such as risk versus benefit, strain theory, and social control theory, which attempt to explain why individuals might engage in criminal behavior based on their perception of risks, societal pressures, and internal or external controls.
What is the role of mental illness and personality factors in criminal behavior as per Dr. Das's expertise?
-Mental illness and personality factors play a significant role in criminal behavior. For instance, individuals with psychotic delusions or certain personality traits like paranoia or impulsiveness may be more prone to violence.
Can you provide an example of how substance abuse can lead to criminal behavior as described in the script?
-An example is the case of a young man who became highly intoxicated and, during an argument over a drug exchange, ended up stabbing his best friend, leading to his arrest for alleged murder.
What is the importance of understanding both genetic and environmental factors in the context of criminal behavior?
-Understanding both genetic and environmental factors is crucial as it provides a comprehensive view of the complex interplay between nature and nurture in shaping criminal behavior, allowing for more effective prevention and intervention strategies.
Outlines
🕵️♂️ Nature vs. Nurture in Violence: An Introduction
Dr. Sohom Das, a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, introduces the classic debate of nature versus nurture in the context of criminality and violence. He plans to discuss environmental factors contributing to violence through case examples of patients he has assessed, including a young woman with no prior criminal tendencies who committed a violent act due to mental illness. The episode will also summarize research findings, indicating a roughly equal genetic and environmental contribution to violent behavior, and touch upon social theories that integrate these factors.
🌐 Environmental Factors Influencing Violence
This paragraph delves into the significant environmental factors that can lead to violent behavior. Dr. Das emphasizes the impact of criminogenic peers, poverty, and lack of educational and economic opportunities that may push individuals towards crime. He also discusses the role of parental influence, exposure to physical abuse and domestic violence, and substance abuse. The paragraph highlights how witnessing or being a victim of violence can shape an individual's behavior and moral compass, potentially leading to violent tendencies later in life.
🧬 Genetic Factors and Personality in Violence
Dr. Das explores the genetic factors associated with violence, focusing on the 'warrior gene' and its role in neurotransmitter regulation, which affects impulse control and mood. He mentions studies that link genetic variations to aggressive behavior in both mice and humans. Additionally, he touches on personality factors such as paranoia and impulsiveness, which can contribute to violent actions, independent of environmental influences.
📚 Social Theories on Crime and Violence
In the final paragraph, Dr. Das introduces social theories that explain the occurrence of crime and violence. He discusses the risk versus benefit theory, which suggests individuals make decisions based on their circumstances, and the strain theory, which posits that individuals may resort to crime due to stress and lack of opportunities. His favorite, the social control theory, proposes that internal and external factors prevent most people from committing crimes, despite the inherent capability and desire. The paragraph concludes with a humorous note, urging viewers to subscribe to his channel.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Forensic Psychiatrist
💡Nature versus Nurture
💡Violence
💡Criminogenic Peers
💡Poverty
💡Mental Illness
💡Genetics
💡Environmental Factors
💡Personality Factors
💡Social Theories
Highlights
Dr. Sohom Das introduces himself as a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist specializing in assessing mentally disordered offenders.
The video aims to explore the age-old debate of nature versus nurture in the context of criminal violence.
Dr. Das provides brief case examples to illustrate environmental factors contributing to violence.
A meta-analysis of 24 studies suggests a 50/50 genetic to environmental contribution to violence.
Twin studies support the conclusion of a roughly equal genetic and environmental influence on violent behavior.
The importance of criminogenic peers in modeling criminal behavior is emphasized.
Poverty is highlighted as a significant factor leading to a lack of educational opportunities and potential criminality.
Parental influence and boundaries are discussed as crucial in shaping children's moral compass.
The impact of being a victim of physical abuse or witnessing domestic violence on future violent behavior is examined.
Mental illness and its direct link to criminal offending in the absence of environmental factors is presented through case studies.
The role of substance abuse, including alcohol, in disinhibition and increased aggression is discussed.
Dr. Das explains the concept of the 'warrior gene' and its association with aggression due to neurotransmitter buildup.
The influence of personality factors such as paranoia and impulsivity on criminal behavior is highlighted.
Social theories are introduced to explain the interplay between nature, nurture, and environmental factors in criminality.
The risk versus benefit theory suggests that individuals weigh their circumstances when deciding to commit crimes.
Strain theory posits that individuals take shortcuts to achieve desired life outcomes due to environmental stressors.
Social control theory is presented, suggesting that internal and external factors prevent the average person from committing crimes.
Dr. Das invites viewers to his talk at CrimeCon and mentions his upcoming book, 'In Two Minds', offering a personal perspective on his work.
The video concludes with a humorous reminder to subscribe and a heartfelt expression of love to the viewers.
Transcripts
Hello cruel world. My name is Dr Sohom Das. I'm a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist.
I assess mentally disordered offenders for a living, so that you don't have to. Today i'm going
to tackle quite a big question in the world of criminality which is this, nature versus nurture
when it comes to violence. So this is an age-old question like how old is the universe? Is time
travel possible? and why do men have nipples? So in this episode i'm going to give you a couple of
very brief case examples of patients that I have assessed just to give you a kind of overview of
some environmental factors. then i'm going to really quickly summarize some of the research
in this area but don't worry i'll make it quick and less as least boring as possible. I'm going
to talk about some specific environmental factors and how they lead to violence. I'm going to talk
about mental health and personality factors because after all that is my area of expertise
and i'll talk about some of the genetic factors as well and finally I am going to tell you
about some theories which bring in some of these factors together. They're kind of social theories.
So sit back and relax welcome to A Psych for Sore Minds. I elevate while you vegetate.. no sorry I
educate while you vegetate. So one thing I would say is i've assessed hundreds of criminal cases
and the vast majority of the time they have lots of environmental factors and they are things
like poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence, being the victims of physical or sexual abuse,
the perpetrators that is when they're younger, poverty did I say that? drugs and alcohol these
are very common. The vast majority of patients that I see have these factors, in fact it's so
common that when I see patients that don't have those factors they really stand out in my memory.
One absolutely major one has to be a case that i've spoken about very recently in a video the
most shocking case of any of my patients. A young 18 year old girl who's got this unblemished past,
she has never been antisocial, no drugs, no family history of criminality, never got into trouble,
out of the blue she became psychotic and tragically she um smothered and killed her
two-year-old nephew who she was babysitting at the time. The reason I bring up this case is because
even though she had no environmental factors, it's very clear that her mental illness directly
led to her offending. Another case that really stands out was very early on in my career. I
met this young man in a medium secure unit. He was in his early 20s and he was also unusual in
that he came from a very privileged background. So for example he was privately educated. For those
people outside the UK, about seven percent of our kids go to these private schools. Very expensive,
the highest level of education. He was one of those people. He uh was very intelligent at school
but despite that and also his siblings were very successful. He had one sister who was a barrister
and a brother who was a dentist. They were older than him but this kid he just constantly got into
trouble with delinquent since he was a kid from getting into fights at school, got into drugs
uh he was actually there for the alleged murder of his best friend who he stabbed after he became
really high on drugs. They were arguing about this drug exchange. They used to throw raves so it was
all related to that. So the point, the reason i'm bringing him up is he is another exceptional case
where there wasn't any environmental factors or clear genetic factors that I could see it
just seemed to be random. So nature versus nurture which one is it? To really briefly summarize the
research that we know. There was a meta-analysis of 24 different studies and they concluded that
the variance of violence is about 50% genetic, 50% environmental so what is a meta-analysis?
People much people much cleverer than me, they combine all these studies and mix the results
together which is much more complicated than it sounds because the ways that you measure violence
can be different. So some people might have like a self-filled questionnaire. Some other pieces
of research might look at their criminal record and they those both those methods have potential
inaccuracies for different reasons. Also the populations they study might be different so some
studies might look at the prison population some might look at males only for example so to combine
all these studies is actually pretty complicated involves a lot of statistics blah blah blah and on
top of that there have been twin studies as well so as you might know if you have monozygotic twins
they're 100% genetically identical so in cases where they're sent for adoption or they grew
up in different environments which is rare but it does happen, you can measure things like violence
so you know how much is afforded to genetic factors. You could also do dizygotic twin studies
where they're non-identical twins and have 50% of the same genetic makeup basically those studies
have revealed pretty much the same thing. So everybody agrees that it's about 50% genetics,
50% environment so it's both nature and nurture. I don't think what i'm telling you
is groundbreaking, I think most people know this anyway. So let's look at some of the environmental
factors i've covered some of this in a previous video called why people offend. So in terms of
environmental factors, the one that cannot be overstated I think is one of the most salient,
is having criminogenic peers. So if you grow up in say like a gang or surrounded by gangs or even
family members who are committing crimes then you model what you see right? you think that offending
is the norm uh your moral boundaries might be a bit warped or you might feel peer pressure. You
might do things like shoplift or get into fights uh just to look cool just to fit in with gang. So
if you lived in the ghettos of America or the favelas of Brazil or like some of the rougher
estates in south London, i'm sure that's more likely to happen than other posher leafy suburbs.
Poverty is another big factor. So if you grow up in an area where there are not educational
opportunities and you know there's very few legitimate ways of making a decent living,
then you're going to be more easily primed to turn towards crime. Obviously there are exceptions. I'm
talking in a general sense. I suppose just general parental boundaries and parental influences
help in terms of socializing people children so that they have this kind of moral compass. Other
factors uh i've mentioned these before from my other patients are things like being the victim
of physical abuse, witnessing domestic violence. So if you're a child and you witness your parents
probably most commonly your father commit violence regularly then you model that behavior as a way
of like conflict resolution or if you're the victim of abuse you might build up all this
like potential anger and frustration that you discharge when you're big enough and you might
feel that it's normal for relationships romantic family or friendships even to have this power
dynamic where somebody has to be the abuser and somebody has to be the victim and also personality
factors so if you're paranoid for example because you grow up in violence then you're more
likely to kind of strike preemptively if somebody looks at you the wrong way for example. Drugs and
substances in general alcohol included is also a huge factor. So there's lots of different
mechanisms for example if you have the opportunity to be a drug dealer because you go up around gangs
then it's a very attractive way of making a living especially if you live in a really deprived area
where at best you might get minimum wage. Drug dealers can make you know
thousands of pounds per night or per week it's a very attractive business model and especially
if you stick to the first rule of drug dealing which is don't get high of your own supply
then you can make huge amounts of money. If you're careful um sorry that's my hamster or
the other rules of drug dealing which is no income tax no vat no money backs no guarantee
and in terms of other types of mechanisms. There's disinhibition so people who use substances
are more likely to be irritable, aggressive and they don't think through the consequences
of their actions. I'm sure many of you watching this have been intoxicated. I'm sure you know
what you're talking about, like that time you did that thing with your work colleague um
and also addiction so people who are addicted feel this huge craving they feel they need to go out
and make money it's no, it's no secret to know that heroin addicts for example crack addicts
they go around commit robberies and burglaries etc etc this is all fairly obvious stuff and then
there's my area of expertise which is mental illness and personality factors. So I already
told you that story about the young woman the tragic case where she killed her two-year-old
nephew. So that was driven by mental illness. The other one i'll tell you about is Andrea Yates. I
mentioned her quite a lot. I've done videos on her just because the case I think is fascinating
and you should go check out my videos. So she also was suffering from psychotic delusions and
she killed five of her own children in 2001 in Houston really sad case, really interesting from
the perspective of a forensic psychiatrist that's delusions hallucinations which is the other common
symptom schizophrenia. I talked about this in I think my hearing voices part two video
so there was this woman who had these hallucinations, hearing the voice of
Drake the singer rapper and she was in London. She believed that when he came on tour that she
was destined to meet him and he was whispering into her ears that she was a princess that she
was swapped at birth and that she had this mission where she had to swap cars with another woman. So
she went out with a machete, threatened a random stranger, stole her car. That person called the
police she was arrested so i'm just giving you an example of how specific psychiatric symptoms,
namely hallucinations, can lead to offending. That is an environmental risk factor and then there's
just general personality factors not uh associated with mental illness. So i've already talked about
being paranoid, being impulsive obviously is a big one and also just having sort of
different social values to the rest of the public. So let's talk briefly about the genetics
because we've talked a lot about the environmental factors and I think the environmental factors are
quite obvious, easy to understand. So in terms of genetics there's lots of clusters of genes and i'm
not going to tell you about them all because to be frank it's a little bit boring and i'm a really
busy man. I've recently got um I was fortunate enough to get an email from a Nigerian prince
and i'm going to inherit all his money so I have to get on with this video because I
need to send him my bank account details. So what i'm going to tell you about is the warrior gene,
so monoamine oxidase inhibitor is a type of enzyme and it breaks down monoamine oxidases which are
neurotransmitters like serotonin which deals with impulse control or dopamine which deals with mood
motivation, arousal and reward and also noradrenaline which helps with our flight
or flight response. So if you've got a deficiency of this monoamine oxidase then you don't have the
enzyme that breaks down these neurotransmitters so they build up in your brain and we know that they
lead to aggression so mutant mice for example that have a defect in this gene that have more of those
neurotransmitters are more aggressive to other mice. So mutant aggressive mice clearly this is
the marvel action film that we're just dying to see and also similarly in a study of American
boys from the age of 7 to 12 they found out that the ones that have behavioral issues at school
also have higher levels of abnormal enzyme that i'm talking about. Although there often has to
be other factors like problems at home as I said before there are lots of other gene clusters um
that's probably the most famous one. Another one I like to mention is called dat1 d81 as in oh I
want that one. So before I conclude this video, I want to quickly introduce you to this channel.
My name is Dr Sohom das. I'm a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist. I assess mentally disordered
offenders in courts and prisons and secure psychiatric units. This channel is all mines,
I dissect a whole range of issues related to mental health and offending. I look at individual
diagnoses, I look at real true crime high profile cases giving you my own expert insight.
I talk about my own cases occasionally although I anonymize them so I don't get in trouble. I
interview ex-patients. What i'm trying to say is there's something for everybody on
this channel. If you're a regular viewer you will know that i'm speaking at CrimeCon which is a huge
crime convention coming over to London for the first time. I'll be giving a talk on real life
cases i've seen people that have killed their own family members. It's going to be fascinating. You
have to come. If you are coming use my code PSYCH for 10% off your ticket because I got you homie.
Also i'm releasing a book in spring of 2022. It's going to be called In Two Minds. It's kind
of autobiographical memoirs of my job and more about my personal life. Go check it out. Okay
just to end i'm going to tell you about some theories, some social theories and these kind
of overlap. I have to say, some of them seem a bit obvious and because they overlap i'm not sure how
helpful they all are but i'm just telling you what I know so the first one is risk versus benefit and
this is basically that everybody generally makes sensible decisions for their lives
in their context. So whereas the average person like you and me might not commit an armed robbery
if you're in a certain circumstance where you really need money you've got the criminogenic
peers, you've got access to weapons, for you the risk versus benefit might be worth it and maybe
certainly for some people I've worked with in forensic psychiatry they don't really care about
jail. They're kind of built for prison they go there they have friends and family that are there
and it's not such a big deal for them so for them and their life is so co-chaotic and
horrible on the outside that actually for them the risk versus benefit is worth it.
Then there's the strain theory which the theory is that everybody kind of wants the same thing in
life which is to be successful for some stability uh for um financial stability but some people
because they're environments like poverty, no role models they're so stressed that they're
willing to take shortcuts so to me it's not that different from the risk versus benefits but it is
a separate theory. So there's another one called the social control theory which I
have to say is my favorite theory which is this is, that crime is fun everybody wants to do it
inherently and everyone's capable of doing it but we have these hurdles, we have these blockades in
doing it and they can be external like having sort of strict parental boundaries or living in
an environment where that behavior is unacceptable or internal like your own empathy your own morals
and your own self-esteem and because of those things you don't commit those crimes
because the average person would not if they had an opportunity to would not commit a crime. So for
example, i'm sure we've all been in a situation we could have easily stolen the chocolate bar but we
didn't although I know that you did you stole the snickers when you're 15 years old anyway that has
come to the end of my channel. The only thing I have to say left is please subscribe not only does
it help me out immeasurably, but if you don't I will tell the police about what happens when
that snickers bar when you're 15 years old i'm not kidding. Okay all that remains for me to tell you
to stay euthymic and please whatever happens do not forget, do not forget, i love you.
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