Jacob BollenKelly HagenEnglish 50May 19, 2014Born a killer or taught 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 committing 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 murders three or more people with significant breaks between incidents (Culture and Understanding) . There are two main theories to explain the behavior of serial killers. One being nature and the other being nurture. The natural side of this serial killer theory says that people, including serial killers, do what they do because they were born that way, usually due to a chemical imbalance in their brain or inherited characteristics. The cultural side of the argument says that people do what they do and make decisions because of 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 can contribute to the behaviors of serial killers. There are two theories that better explain what nature versus nurture is and how it affects everyone's behavior in life, especially serial killers. One of these theories is learning theory and the other is psychodynamic theory. Learning theory is the culture part of the nature versus nurture argument, arguing that it is not genes that determine our behavior and personality, but how we are raised. Certain events that occur during childhood can trigger things...... middle of paper ......gnodicated as a psychopath but can function in society. Sometimes they're married and are totally capable of having a life, but their life isn't 100% focused on killing. A failed psychopath is just the opposite, someone who is a danger to society and someone who cannot be left alone on the streets. There is much controversy over whether serial killers can be classified as unsuccessful or successful psychopaths, which was another main point of the article. Although I wasn't able to include this in my essay, I still got a good quote from the article: "The prevalence of psychopathy is not known with certainty, but is estimated to be around 0, 6 to 1% in the general population (Coid, Yang, Ullrich). , Roberts and 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 killers..