Nature Vs Nurture

[Soubriquet]

Do you think anyone is ever born evil/bad natured or do you think it’s the environment that did it?

What a question for 8am on a Thursday morning 🤣🤣🤣 I think it may be a bit of both.

I know! I’m so deep

I’m currently watching a thriller film about a murder so it just crossed my mind

No one is born evil. People are born with genetic predispositions for mental illness, but it's how they are nutured that determines their reactions and abilities to cope with these.

A bit of both, I think.

My best friend and her husband are lovely people, their son has all he needs but not spoilt, very creative so he'll get fancy paints etc as gifts and use them fully, but also has a nintendo switch. They are part of a big famil y(friends is one of 9, 90% live in the same town) so is around older kids, babies, loving aunts and uncles, no drama.

They have clear boundaries for him, he knows right from wrong. But he has no empathy whatsoever and can be unecessarily cruel with not a care for punishments or being told off. Totally the opposite of his parents.

I think he's going to be a handful during the teenage years (he's 9yo now), but hope he comes out the end ok.

I agree with TomHanks (never a phrase i thought i'd say!).

As a nursery teacher, sometimes children have little quirks that are a phase and they are lovely once the phase has passed. Sometimes you have a child in who is very challenging but then you find out their background and understand why. And twice in 25 years I have come across a child who is genuinely scary and noone is sure (or saying) if there is any underlying cause of this. It's not so much behaviour, it's an attitude and a presence.

Bit of both.

Interesting documentary I saw years ago about genes that make you more likely to be a psychopath. The researcher discovered he had them but when he discussed it with his family, colleagues, other researchers they agreed (a) he had some of the personality traits you'd expect to see in a psychopathy but (b) he wasn't violent, amoral etc. He came from a close, loving family and his parents had worked hard on bringing him up with rules, boundaries, sanctions and so on, so he'd turned out OK.

Another interesting one from last year - lots of people who end up in prison for crimes of violence turn out to have had a head injury early in life.

Also, I think there is research that shows that experiencing neglect and/or abuse very early in life does actually change the way your brain develops.

And finally, susceptibility to addiction is genetic, and so are various neurodevelopmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, that can lead to problems getting on with others and functioning in a world designed for people with different brains.

It's easy to say that if an adult does bad things it's by choice. However, if you take all the above into account, making the right choices is a lot easier for some of us than it is for others.

There's an HBO documentary (I think we accessed it via Now TV) called Crazy Not Insane that is about a psychologist who spent her career studying serial killers and it contributes a lot to the nature/ nurture debate. Worth a watch but parts of it are very harrowing.

@elQuintoConyo

I agree with TomHanks (never a phrase i thought i'd say!).

Another reason why I asked is my dd (7) has has the same upbringing as ds (5).

But whilst he is sweet, kind and thoughtful, she is turning out to be a handful.

She is acting more and more like her aunt (who we have no contact with).

Her aunt is a complete narcissistic bitch and is a really horrible person.

DD is no where near that bad but it’s worrying when she shows signs of being similar

Personally I totally agree with @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g above.

Genetics give predisposition but nurture develops them into personality and behaviours.

Also OP, I think that even if siblings are brought up in the same home really fairly, it's still huge that one is firstborn and eldest and the other is the younger sibling. That gives them quite different nurture experiences.

I think it is almost all environment.

I work in a PRU, a school for excluded children. They're not evil but some have done some evil things, most have been the kinds of children you're glad are no longer in school with your child.

We never get a student and think "how did you end up here?". There's always some significant trauma in their past, usually repeated and sustained trauma, that makes you wonder how they ever get through a day.

No such thing as ‘evil’ but it’s generally believed (well it was when I studied psychology) to be a combination of both.

There were lots of twin studies (the background of these is horrifying enough - see Three Perfect Strangers documentary).

Years ago a young teenager in our area did something horrific. In that case, I really do believe it wasn't down to nurture, not in the usual sense of having had a neglectful or abusive family. We knew the family slightly and like everyone else in the same position we were absolutely stunned when the news broke. I remember someone saying a friend who taught at the teen's school was in the staff meeting when they were told what had happened, and the teachers were left reeling, as of all the children in the school who might have done something like this, that child would have been near the bottom of the list.

I think that's very rare, though.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Years ago a young teenager in our area did something horrific. In that case, I really do believe it wasn't down to nurture, not in the usual sense of having had a neglectful or abusive family. We knew the family slightly and like everyone else in the same position we were absolutely stunned when the news broke. I remember someone saying a friend who taught at the teen's school was in the staff meeting when they were told what had happened, and the teachers were left reeling, as of all the children in the school who might have done something like this, that child would have been near the bottom of the list.

I think that's very rare, though.

Yes, because nothing terrible ever happens in "nice" families

not in the usual sense of having had a neglectful or abusive family.

How can you possibly know what happens behind closed doors? The psychiatrist mentioned by BrandoraPaithwaite said that in every case, even if the murderer claimed to come from a normal loving family (like Ted Bundy) she found incidents of abuse or a head trauma in their past

You can't possibly know.

@HallFloor, that's not what I'm saying. Of course abuse and neglect can happen in ostensibly 'nice' families, but this wasn't one of those cases.

@IamTomHanks, in this case, all I can say is that if the authorities did find any evidence of abuse or neglect in that family, it didn't come out at the criminal trial (which was reported in the press) and it was so incredibly well hidden by the family that their friends, neighbours and colleagues had no glimmering of it.

The trauma isn't always abuse and it hasn't always happened in the nuclear family but how would you know that this wasn't one of those cases?

I think a bit of both. A friend has a son who has had the same upbringing as his brother, but has zero empathy, which can make him seem bad natured at times. I think it's very hard to nurture something like empathy if for whatever reason it doesn't come naturally. I don't think people are born evil as such but if they have a mental predisposition for some kinds of 'evil' behaviour then these behaviours can be triggered by environmental causes for sure.

I wouldn't, of course. My final word on this is that the teenager ended up in a secure mental health unit. No idea what the diagnosis was.

My brother acts very similarly to my uncle, is indistinguishable in childhood photos, and has the same handwriting - we live in different countrys and see him once or twice a year
DS1 also looks similar to them both but has a completely different personality.

I think different personality types may react differently to trauma/experiences...when my mum and uncle were small children they used to be sent to the nuns at the seaside for a months or two each winter for their lungs (imagine call the midwife but in Milan) - my mum had a lovely time but my uncle hated it, and isn't very sociable as an adult.

I think it's very hard to nurture something like empathy if for whatever reason it doesn't come naturally. I think capacity for empathy varies between people. Someone can be unselfish but still find it hard to put themselves in someone else's shoes. But is that inbuilt, or is it because maybe they've grown up with an objective, problem-solving approach to life rather than spending time reading novels and watching soap operas - things that might have helped them understand other people's feelings?

@MereDintofPandiculation

I think it's very hard to nurture something like empathy if for whatever reason it doesn't come naturally. I think capacity for empathy varies between people. Someone can be unselfish but still find it hard to put themselves in someone else's shoes. But is that inbuilt, or is it because maybe they've grown up with an objective, problem-solving approach to life rather than spending time reading novels and watching soap operas - things that might have helped them understand other people's feelings?

I think if it's noted in children it must be inbuilt in some way - the friend's son I mentioned before has had the same exposure to novel/soap operas/problem solving as his brother, but in terms of empathy they are worlds apart.

Jamie Bulger's killers were born evil