Thursday, April 28, 2016
Do psychopaths really make up 1% of the population?
There are many different theories about psychopaths and the differences between psychopaths and sociopaths. We learned that psychopaths make up 1% of the population and sociopaths make up 4% of the population. That would mean 3 million people in the US have what it takes to be ruthless killers, scammers, or other random crimes that psychopaths tend to commit. Currently there is close to 2,000 students at Los Altos High School. According to what we have learned, there is around 20 psychopaths that go to this school. However, I don't hear about Los Altos students taking part in ruthless crimes. On a broader level, there were 52 US school shootings in 2015. This sounds like school shootings are a common thing, before you realize that there are over 100,000 public schools in the US. With dozens of psychopaths going to every school, you would think that these horrific crimes would be more common. One explanation for this would be that full blown psychopaths make even a smaller percentage of the population than 1%. Another would be that psychopaths prefer to remain low-profile, even though we have learned that they like to brag about their crimes. What do you think?
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I think an important thing to note is how many things go into making a psychopath. There needs to be the gene mutations, violence or traumatic events during puberty, etc. While statistically there should be 20 psychopaths attending this school, Los Altos does not really meet the standards for a psychopath creating community. So even though 20 people at this school may have the genetic makeup of a psychopath, it's highly unlikely that they all went through a traumatic event in puberty that would have triggered these genes.
ReplyDeleteWhile the statistics are true, it is the experiences of the one with the psychopathic genes that determines whether or not they resort to being like the cold, ruthless killers we see when we think of the term "psychopath". Los Altos is a community where major crime is rarely committed, so it is very unlikely that the students among us who are hypothetically psychopaths have had their psychopathic genes triggered. It all really depends on the environment that the person grows up in.
ReplyDeleteIn the documentary, it was stated that finding a fully violent psychopath in a high school is very uncommon, since those traits don't manifest until later in life. With this being said, it is likely that there are potential psychopaths at LAHS, but they may only show symptoms such as manipulation or compulsive lying, something that could be passed off as a phase or a personality type.
ReplyDeleteI think that there perhaps are ~20 psychopaths here at Los Altos, but they are more manipulative than violent; not all psychopaths are mass murderers. From what we read, a psychopath's traits cannot be changed, no matter the environment that he or she grows up in. In this relatively safe area, there are many successful people, and some of them could have some psychopathic genes in order to be successful, such as narcissism. They may not be the stereotypical serial-killer psychopaths, but they could be just as manipulative and deceptive, just in a different context.
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