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<snipped for brevity>There is something bigger here than enviroment.
You originally stated that I am suggesting environment is the cause. That is not true, and in fact, I am one who wholly believes in the frontal lobe research to explain the CAUSE of psychopathy. Causes and contributing factors are not one and the same. I thought I clarified this when I replied that, in that particular case, I felt that environment was a contributing factor (I did NOT say it was a cause).
The same article you linked to in fact includes reference to environment being a contributing factor:
He said not all monsters are born and that many are made worse by their environments on their roads to evil
No, you didn’t say anybody was a psychopath. The studies that you are referring to however, wrt neurological issues within the frontal lobe, are generally referenced in accepted scholarly articles on psychopathy:
http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&sclient...10,d.aWc&fp=3ed500c6ac5d7bda&biw=1280&bih=600
Your accusation that I implied no aboriginal people were capable of doing this is just wrong. I had originally said I thought we’d be hard-pressed to come up with a Canadian aboriginal serial killer (because in over 10 years of research, I was not familiar with one). Otto found one, and in reading about that ONE case, it stood out to me that, at a time when a child was in a critical stage of social development, he was in fact removed from his cultural setting which happened to be aboriginal. IOW, had that child been born with the frontal lobe / neurological issues (the CAUSE of psychopathy) and not had the stressor of being removed from his cultural setting (the CONTRIBUTING FACTOR of environment, not to mention abandonment issues as a whole other ball game), maybe those stressors would have left him simply a psychopathic personality, not a psychopath who went on to murder.
And please don’t play the race card with me. I am one of the least bigoted people on this planet. I am in no way relating the propensity to be a psychopathic serial killer to RACE (white, black, pink or purple), only relating to and considering stressors that may have exacerbated the decline of that one particular individual into his status as a psychopathic serial killer … one of which was his removal from his cultural identity (no different than had he been a white child taken out of his cultural setting and raised by someone of another culture).
And yes, a lot of people grow up in the same environment and don’t turn out to be serial killers. Maybe they were born with a fully functioning frontal lobe that continued to develop in a normal fashion. IOW, the root CAUSE of psychopathy didn’t exist, so therefore the same environmental issues (whatever CONTRIBUTING FACTORS) would not have had the same affect on them.
How do I explain the Dahmers, 3 guys 1 hammer, Cody Legebokoff. etc with their normal childhoods and normal families? Obviously without KNOWING the neurological functionings of their brains as it relates to frontal lobe abnormalities (the CAUSE), and not knowing all details / circumstances of their upbringing, both of us are at a disadvantage without having all the answers, and therefore neither of us is really qualified to provide a fully informed opinion.
MOO