Serial killers are considered to be highly dangerous human beings, because by definition they commit murder many times, and therefore they pose a threat to society. However, it is questioned whether they are clinically ill or whether they are legally responsible for their actions. Offender profiling is a technique which enables crime investigators and the police to divide serial killers into disorganised ( a killer who acts impulsively and out of control) and organised categories (a killer who is very much in control of what they do and therefore considered sane). This is primarily based on the personality and behavioural differences. Hakkanen and Laajaslo (2006) distinguished between people with psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia, and people who are psychopathic (having an antisocial personality disorder). People who are put into the psychopathic group are generally considered by society to be ‘bad’ rather than ‘mad’, because their mental well being would regard them as entirely sane and in complete control of their actions, but with the lack of empathy and ability to understand the emotions of others, they are driven towards actions which are evil and wiked. The lack of guilt and remorse for their actions also leads us to believe that they are truly bad, because there is no desire within them to be ‘good’. Homicidal psychopaths show a high degree of planning, organisation and intent to cause harm, and they are often described as cold blooded and instrumental. Psychopaths are more likely to plan their murders right down to the most minute details, whereas killings committed by people with psychotic illnesses tend to be unplanned. Therefore, homicidal psychopaths are thought of as more responsible for their actions than psychotic murderers.
A famous example of a psychopathic murder commonly referred to as the ‘thrill vulture’, has provided much debate as to his sanity throughout the years. Albert Fish was sentenced for murdering and eating 30 victims, all of them children, in 1920’s America, as well as inflicting deviant activities which were ‘too gruesome to be recorded’. He lived a nocturnal lifestyle and lived alone in highly unhygienic conditions. Fish was found to be sane and was sentenced to death. It is difficult to process that a human being of this nature could be considered sane. However, due to the meticulous nature of his actions, it was not thought that he had a mental disorder. However, could it not be that the extreme level of control that he possessed, encouraged his madness which propelled his badness.
Laura and Kayleigh

A science is defined as something in which involves a definable subject matter, construction of theory and an attempt to explain observed phenomena. Explanation and prediction are two widely accepted objectives of science, as well as the discovery of general laws or principles which feed back into a construction of a theory. It is questionable whether psychology can be called a science due to the diverse range of theoretical approaches or orientations in terms of perspectives of which psychology is viewed such as the social, biological and developmental approaches. Each approach rests upon a different image of what human beings are like, which in turn determines what is important to study. In light of this, different approaches are seen as different facets of the same discipline, or even self contained disciplines within themselves, which would in turn suggest that psychology is not one science with one definable subject matter. According to Kuhn, this would mean that psychology has no paradigm (since it is not universally agreed from one perspective) and is therefore still in a state of pre-science.

One common belief about science and scientific method is that scientific discovery begins with simple, unbiased, unprejudiced observation. However, often from a psychologist’s perspective it would be said that there is no such thing as ‘unbiased’ or ‘unprejudiced’ observation because observation is always selective, pre-structured and directed towards a particular goal. We must first have some idea what we are looking for, otherwise we cannot know when we have found it.

Finally, it is questioned how appropriate it is to study behaviour using methods of science. Psychologists tend to study what people do, meaning that they are engaging in some of the behaviours that they are trying to understand such as thinking and perceiving. Thus the psychologist is part of the subject matter, rather than there being an external definable entity which is being investigated. Psychology therefore produces a large amount of subjective data which is open to interpretation and it is through this that psychology may be rejected as a science. However, can any scientist be completely objective through observation?

Laura and Anna

The nature- nurture debate is a philosophical debate over what matters most in development- either our biologically created nature, or our socially created nurture. Most recent developments to the argument have concluded that both have a strong influencing factor on our development as individuals. For example, whilst the blue print for our brain is genetically determined, the language we speak is influenced by our exposure to language. Developments in science have now told us that the environment operates the genes which we inherit from our parents and distant ancestors. The process of evolution has determined the DNA packages from our parents that have become us as individuals. But as soon as we were conceived, the environment has operated on us via our mother’s bloodstream. Therefore, genes and environment are not stand alone factors; they work together throughout our lives.

One example psychologists and scientists has investigated is attraction. One question asked is ‘why do people find blue eyes attractive?’ In evolutionary terms, blue eyes arose as a single mutation about 10,000 years ago in the Black Sea area of Eastern Europe. So the question is, how did the mutation survive? There are two evolutionary processes to be looked at, both of which are distal, meaning existing from distant family to human ancestors (as opposed to proximal which means close to the centre of something in terms of a human today). The first process is natural selection. Variations in genetic makeup of a species are affected by changes in the environment, so certain traits either prosper or become extinct. For example, a particular gene may make individuals more vulnerable to a mental disorder like depression, and such trait would be undesirable, but unlikely to prevent reproduction, so the gene remains.  The second process is of sexual selection, which is a variation which specifically promotes reproduction. Examples include blonde hair, blue eyes and possibly a waist/hip ratio in women. These are factors which are likely to increase reproductive success, because being sexually attractive means that your mutation survives and prospers.

The spread of any characteristic is determined by a process called gene surfing, which is where the rapid expansion of a population carries a gene faster than it can be removed by natural selection. Therefore, in the case of blue eyes, they quickly became gene surfed into Northern Europe when the human population expanded into this area. This is also associated with the idea of meme surfing which the idea of blue eyes is being more attractive spreads as well. This therefore provides an environmental component of what creates attractiveness. The speed of meme surfing depends on the speed of communication, which nowadays is especially rapid so can have a direct and vast impact on human behaviour in a short space of time.

Therefore, overall this provides one of many examples of the way in which human evolution works to incorporate nature and nature, and how on a smaller scales, individuals are formulated and shaped by aspects of both to different extents making it difficult to determine whether one is actually stronger than the other.

By Laura and Alice

The human brain is divided into two relatively symmetrical halves which are known as the left and right hemispheres. Recent brain scanning has told us about the structure of the brain, which shows clearly defined regions within the brain and the function which they have. A key area of research linked these things together to explore the localisation of function. This is the extent to which particular jobs are performed by particular parts of the brain. Some aspects of localisation are specific to specific different structures, many of which are replicated on the left and the right hand side. However, some functions demonstrate lateralisation- which limits a particular function to one side of the brain. An example of lateralisation is our language function which is restricted the left hemisphere. Another example is movement on each side of the body which is controlled by the opposite side of the brain. For example, the movement of our right hand, is controlled by the left hemisphere of our brain and the movement of our left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere. This is called contralateral control, and this transfer takes place across the optic chiasm.

The image above presents the different functions on the left and right hemispheres of the brain. You can see that the left hemisphere is the more logical side of the brain responsible for language. The Broca’s area is responsible for speech production and the Wernicke’s area is responsible for speech comprehension. This therefore means that if an individual damages the left hemisphere of their brain, they are left unable to speak, or understand speech. Whilst the hemispheres are different in the tasks they carry out, in order for us to function adequately, the two halves need to communicate, which they do via the corpus callosum which is a large commisure, binding the two halves together. This gives the right hand side of the brain access to words and descriptions which it would be without, if there were no bridge between the two.

However, there are some instances of people who have their corpus callosum severed, as a surgical treatment for epilepsy. Epileptic seizures occur as a result of abnormal electrical discharges of groups of neurons in the brain. Seizures vary depending on which part and how much of the brain is affected, for example, in complex focal seizures, electrical discharges occur in the temporal lobe of the brain which controls emotion and memory function, meaning that the individual will show uncontrollable behaviours such as crying or laughing irrepressibly. Someone experiencing a seizure is also likely to become unconscious and experience muscle spasms which may result in them breaking their bones or damaging themselves. Therefore, attempting to find a way to reduce the frequency or severity of seizures was highly important.

The main surgical way of preventing the spread of neuronal findings was to sever the corpus callosum called commissurotonomy, which averted neurons passing from one hemisphere to another, thus reducing likelihood and severity of a seizure. The method was successful and not only did it stop discharges from spreading, but reduced epileptic seizures to negligible amounts.

Extraordinarily, most people who have undergone this surgery have suffered very few side effects which have impacted their everyday lives. In effect, they were living with two brains inside one head, which were functioning sufficiently. In 1968, psychologist Robert Sperry, investigated the effects of the split brain surgery as well as taking the unique opportunity to map the lateralisation of brain function.

This video gives an overview of his study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoVImOgDl-0

Sperry used a sample of eleven participants who had previously suffered from severe epilepsy over a period of ten years or more, and had undergone commissutoronomy. He devised a series of tasks completed in a lab which involved presenting information to one visual field so it went to the opposite side of the brain. Each visual test began by fixing the gaze on the centre line of the screen and presenting stimuli for exactly one tenth of a second. This ensured that the time available was insufficient for the participant’s eye to move to view the stimulus in the other visual field. There were various tests that took place.

For example, one of the studies was recognition of visual stimuli presented to the left and right hemisphere separately. A picture was flashed to either the left visual field or the right visual field. They were shown the image again to either the same or other visual field and asked if they recognised it. It was found that pictures of objects were recognised only if they were flashed to the same visual field because memories of stimuli from one visual field can’t cross to the other hemisphere so can’t be accessed to compare them.

Another test was verbal identification of objects placed in the hand. Participants were asked to say or write the name of an object they were holding or to retrieve an object they had held amongst a selection of other objects. It was found that only objects held in the right hand could be named. Objects in the left hand could be retrieved, but only in same hand. Objects in the right hand could be said or written, since the information was received by the left hemisphere which is responsible for language and communication. The object could be found amongst others since recognition can be controlled by either hemisphere, as long as it’s the same one that made the initial identification since there is no cross retrieval.

This study demonstrates the hemispheric lateralisation and offers a warning that unilateral damage could have profound effects such as implications of the left hemisphere surgery on speech.