Jacob BollenKelly HagenEnglish 5019 May 2014Born a killer or learned to be a killer?Serial killers have fascinated and intrigued the world for centuries. It seems like everyone wants to know why serial killers do what they do and how they can live with themselves after doing something so terrible. Some may believe that a serial killer is anyone who kills more than one person, but the FBI defines a serial killer as someone who kills at least three people with significant breaks between each incident (Culture and Understanding). There are two main theories to explain the behavior of serial killers. One is nature and the other is nurture. The naturalistic side of this serial killer theory states that people, including serial killers, do what they do because they were born that way, usually due to a chemical imbalance in their brains or inherited characteristics. The educational side of the argument says that people do what they do and make decisions based on how they were raised, what they were taught and things like that. An example of how nature affects serial killers is psychopathology, and an example of how nurture affects serial killers is being raised in an abusive home environment. Both of these things can contribute to the behaviors of serial killers. There are two theories that best explain what nature and nurture are and how they influence everyone's behavior in life, especially serial killers. One of these theories is the learning theory and the other is the psychodynamic theory. Learning theory is the nurture side of the nature versus nurture argument, stating that it is not genes that determine our behavior and personality, but how we grow. Certain events that happen in childhood can trigger things... middle of paper... diagnosed as psychopathic but can function in society. Sometimes they are married and are completely capable of having a life, their lives are not 100% focused on murder. An unsuccessful psychopath is the exact opposite, someone who poses a danger to society and someone who cannot be left alone to wander the streets. There is much controversy as to whether serial killers can be classified as successful or successful psychopaths, which was another main point of the article. While I wasn't able to include it in my essay, I still got a good quote from the article: "The prevalence of psychopathy is not definitively known, but is estimated to be around 0.6–1% in the general population (Coid, Yang, Ullrich , Roberts, & Hare, 2009).” This gave readers an idea of ​​how many psychopaths there are in the world, which supported my argument that not all psychopaths are murderers...