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Nature, Nurture, and the Freedom of Choice

Barbenly Vergara PHIL 1120-002 Dr. Alexander Izrailevsky April 15, 2014 http://barbenly.weebly.com/case-study---freedom.html

On the subject of Freedom, one must explore the multifaceted boundaries its definition requires. It is one in a plethora of ideas which finds its meaning deepened through the understanding of its opposition. But what is the diametrical opposite of freedom? It depends upon the context freedom is defined. Independence has dependence while release requires captivity. But all of freedoms contexts define space as either liberating or confining and movement as autonomous or subordinate. All of freedoms synonyms and antonyms boil down to the ability, or inability, to exercise the power to choose what one wants. The freedom of choice defines societies, economies, class/caste, and psychological states. The exercise of choice is so powerful it can cause revolutionary forces of change. In a sense, nature decides our fate. This idea has provoked much of the age-old debate on nature versus nurture. Because, in actuality, we dont have a choice as to who our biological parents are, and in turn we dont have a choice in our genetic make up nor the environment well be brought up into as we develop. Even our motivations and emotional inklings that draw us to and away from particular things has been shown to be decisions made by the brain and our complex biochemistry. And our particular brain, like the rest of our body, is an original design of our genetic coding. So much so that it can set many of us up for disease or disorder, further defining our behavior before we even learn to walk and talk. Like the natural laws it abides by, genetics dont make a judgment call between good and evil. That is something for humans to decide within their societys ethics. But what if someone in the society is genetically predisposed to be incapable of distinguishing between good and evil? What if, regardless of consequence, someone is incapable of guilt, remorse or empathy for a violation of another persons rights? This is the fated hand psychopaths are dealt.

The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is considered by many field professionals to be the most reliable and valid measurement of psychopathy to this day (Chivers) (Sellborn) (Miller) (Crime Time). Developed by criminal psychologist Dr. Robert Hare, its defined personality traits (superficial charm, egocentricity, manipulative, callous, impulsive, lack of remorse and empathy, etc.) have been so successful in sifting out psychopaths in a prison full of felons that it is now used to model the neurology and genetics of psychopathy (Crime Time). A significant neurological find, common amongst violent, imprisoned psychopaths, is a significantly smaller limbic region, which is notably used in emotional processing. There is also a disruption in the connectivity between the limbic system and parts of the frontal lobe shown to be associated with moral decision making and emotional processing (Miller). In the study of notable murderers, noticeable brain damage in the orbital cortex and the interior part of the temporal lobe has been found (Fallon). But the key thing, says neuroscientist James Fallon in his 2009 TED talk, is the MAO-A gene, notably linked to major violence. [I]t has to do with too much brain serotonin during development, which is kind of interesting because serotonin is supposed to make you calm and relaxed. But if you have this gene, in utero your brain is bathed in this, so your whole brain becomes insensitive to serotonin, so it doesn't work later on in life. Theoreticallyin order to express this gene, in a violent way, very early on, before puberty, you have to be involved in something that is really traumatic -- not a little stress, not being spanked or something, but really seeing violence, or being involved in itAnd so, if you have that gene, and you see a lot of violence in a certain situation, this is the recipe for disaster, absolute disaster. (Fallon) Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist who has spent the last two decades studying the brains of psychopaths, recently explained that though we attribute psychopathy to the extreme cases were familiar with, such as Hannibal Lecter or Ted Bundy, statistics show one in 150 people will meet the stringent clinical criteria for the disorder (Miller). These hundreds of thousands of people, whether Ted Bundy or a successful CEO, will share many of the common biological underpinnings that would explain their psychopathic traits, violent or not. Like autism, a

condition which we think of as a spectrum, psychopathy, the diagnosis, bleeds into normalcy (Chivers). So we've been looking at this: the interaction of genes, what's called epigenetic effects, brain damage, and environment, and how these are tied together. And how you end up with a psychopath, and a killer, depends on exactly when the damage occurs. It's really a very precisely timed thing. You get different kinds of psychopaths. (Fallon) James Fallon is a testimony to this. His great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather on his fathers side committed the first historically recorded matricide in America. From then on followed seven generations of men who were all murderers. In this same lineage, well also find Lizzie Borden, our rare female psychopathic killer. But with such lineage, how then did James Fallon turn out to be a successful Neuroscientist, emeritus professor of anatomy at UC Irvine, happily married with children, without an outstanding criminal record? It can mostly be attributed to the expression of that MAO-A gene inherent in his family and all psychopaths. In order for this violent gene to be turned on, it requires an exposure to traumatizing violence before puberty in order to make a psychopath into a cold-blooded killer, something James was never exposed to in his loving home. [W]hat I think might happen in these areas of the world, where we have constant violence, you end up having generations of kids that are seeing all this violence. And if I was a young girl, somewhere in a violent areaI'd find some tough guy, right, to protect me. Well what the problem is this tends to concentrate these genes. And now the boys and the girls get them. So I think after several generations, and here is the idea, we really have a tinderbox. (Fallon) Can dangerous environments truly breed more danger in this manner? Perhaps it is the environment that causes these behavioral shifts, regardless of genetics. One psychologist from the Bronx showed how far social conventions can guide the behavioral course of healthy, courteous individuals.

In August of 1971, Philip Zimbardo, a tenured psychology professor at Stanford, conducted the now infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Hailing from the South Bronx, New York Citys inner city ghetto, Zimbardo yearned to understand what made people go wrong. As 24 clinically sane young men volunteered for a psychology experiment, they were randomly chosen to be a prisoner or a guard and thrown into their role in a matter of days without scheduled notification. The prisoners where arrested from their homes, processed, searched, stripped, shaved, deloused, given an indecent uniform, and thrown into a cell in a matter of hours. Meanwhile the guards were identically uniformed, complete with dark sunglasses, whistle, and a nightstick, given only the instruction of keeping order in the prison. (Zimbardo) An experiment intended to last two weeks was cut short on the 6th day after multiple red flags. Not only were the prisoners withdrawing and behaving in pathological ways, five of the twelve had to be released early after suffering severe mental breakdowns. And not only were a third of the guards behaving so sadistically that other guards felt helpless to intervene, they escalated their abuse in the night under the impression that researchers were not watching. Similarly, Zimbardo did not realize his own psychological degradation as the prisons superintendent. So immersed in his own role, it took a colleague filled with outrage saying, Its terrible what youre doing to these boys! for Zimbardo to realize she had been the only one to question the moral implications of their experiment gone dark. (Zimbardo) Social norms and conventions can shape the moral landscape. The Stanford Prison Experiment was groundbreaking because it showed how far behaviors can be dictated by the conventions of environment and authority. Though these cases show extremes of both nature and environment playing the devils advocate, in every case there appear anomalies. Genetically predisposed psychopaths often times are not exposed to traumatizing violence at childhood and

in turn can sustain a relatively happy marriage and successful career in their adulthood, completely free of the horrific violence we attribute to psychopaths. In contrast, degradative environments, blind obedience, and group behavior has the ability to turn average mentally stable citizens into sadists. In the Stanford Prison, we found the abrupt end came as a respected authoritative figure called the situation into moral question. All it takes are these few individuals to break conventional molds. But it takes the rest of us recognizing the legitimacy in order to propel social change. Trends set social conventions, which project onto individuals their assumed roles in given contexts. But as individuals, we choose moment by moment whether to comply or address the immoral basis of these expectations, even at the risk of being endangered or ostracized. There are those who choose so bravely to stand firm to their convictions, even at the face of death. Socrates is one who chose death over life in exile because he saw no way in parting with his philosophy because they were one. To deny his philosophy was to kill that which connected him to everything outside of himself, a more tragic death than the pain of mortality. Sacrifice gives depth of meaning to our choices and our acts. It is in this space that we see people laid bare. While psychopaths are associated with shallow emotions and lack of remorse, martyrs will give deep meaning and reflection to every act. Every action taken is an exercise in belief. Although our genetics and environment dictate much of our future, we choose every second how we employ ourselves within our environment. We choose how to play the hand chance dealt us and our actions reflect what we find meaningful and worthy in this life. As Viktor Frankl stated, Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedomsto choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way.

Bibliography
Chivers, Tom. "Psychopaths: how can you spot one?" The Telegraph 6 April 2014. Crime Time. "Neuroscience and the Psychopath Inside with James Fallon." The Lip TV. YouTube, 1 December 2013. Video. Fallon, Jim. Exploring the Mind of a Killer. TED Conferences, LLC. Long Beach, February 2009. Video. Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search For Meaning. 1946. Hare, Robert D. "Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Case of Diagnostic Confusion." Psychiatric Times 1 February 1996. Miller, Greg. "What It's Like to Spend 20 Years Listening to Psychopaths for Science." Wired 17 April 2014. Sellborn, Martin. "Personality disorders in the DSM-5 and beyond." The Gavel July 2103. Zimbardo, Philip G. The Standford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment. 1999-2014. webpage. April 2014.