Savage Spawn (6 page)

The issue of race as it relates to psychopathy also bears mention. Approximately 45 percent of inmates in U.S. prisons are black, a figure that is approximately four times the rate of blacks in the general population. The notion that blacks have a biologically determined higher rate of criminality and/or psychopathy is laden with racist overtones and is sure to be met with anger and counterclaims that black crime is primarily a reaction to oppression (a special subset of hot-blooded aggression). A study comparing black and white inmates offers some support for this, but it also suggests that psychopathy is a good predictor of criminality when applied to blacks as well as whites (41).

These researchers, using the most widely accepted and reliable test of psychopathy, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, found that black psychopaths showed more similarities than dissimilarities to their white brethren. And for both black and white convicts, psychopathy was positively associated with violence as adults. Furthermore, in a related study of the same inmate sample, black psychopaths exhibited some of the same distinctive learning problems displayed by white psychopaths.

However, important differences also emerged. All the raters in the study were white, and they judged black prisoners to be more psychopathic than white prisoners, raising the suspicion that racism and/or unfamiliarity with black culture contribute to an “overpathologization” of blacks. Supporting this is the finding that black psychopaths are less similar to whites on certain core factors of the
interpersonal
aspect of psychopathy—callousness, cruelty, glibness, tendency to lie—but much more consistent on impulsive items pertaining to an
unstable, poorly socialized lifestyle
. In addition, for blacks, the Hare test didn't discriminate cleanly between interpersonal and impulsive factors, suggesting, again, that cultural bias may have influenced the psychopathy ratings.

Overall, these results indicate that while the concept of psychopathy shouldn't be abandoned when studying black criminals, standard tests of psychopathy may be measuring different factors in blacks and whites, with the former perhaps more influenced by “hot-blooded” elements related to abuse and poverty.

Ironically, a social-liberal approach could theoretically be more comfortable with the idea that blacks exhibit higher rates of psychopathy, for if antisocial behavior is nothing more than a learned reaction to oppression, blacks, a group clearly subjected to more racism and socioeconomic deprivation than whites, could be
expected
to be more psychopathic. And if family breakdown is a causal factor for psychopathy, the fact that 95 percent of black teenage mothers are unwed bears some serious notice. (Though, with a 65 percent rate, white and Hispanic girls aren't far behind.)

Whatever the statistical specifics, we should not be deterred from identifying and segregating severe psychopaths of any ethnicity. Whether a cold, cruel, habitual criminal is black, white, yellow, Jewish, Christian, or Buddhist is of little solace to his victims. The fact remains that once he's locked up for a long time, the rest of us will be safer.

The most reasonable conclusion that can be drawn about environment and psychopathy is that some combination of environmental stressors—physical abuse, social chaos, parental drug use and alcoholism, and overall rotten families, especially rotten and/or absent fathers—contributes to severe antisocial behavior in young boys. In many cases this develops into psychopathy and a lifetime of criminality.

VII

The Scapegoat We Love to Hate

Social problems may require long-term solutions, but that shouldn't deter us from seeking efficient, short-term solutions to severe juvenile crime. If increased public safety is our goal, efficiency also dictates that we cease pouring money into research and clinical activities that have little direct impact upon rates of child criminality. A prime example of such diminished returns is the flood of studies conducted on the factor most often blamed for childhood criminality:
media violence.

Each time another “senseless” crime involving a young criminal hits the news, one reaction is certain: a spate of editorials blaming the outrage—and the downfall of society in general—on rising levels of violence portrayed on television, motion pictures, and video games.

This is nothing new. During the pioneering days of radio, panic calls were sounded about the deleterious effects of radio crime shows upon American youth (42). And there is no doubt that children do have the opportunity to avail themselves of more vicarious violence than in previous generations (though it might be argued that boys drafted into the wars that preoccupied America during the previous two and half centuries were exposed to a good deal more
real
violence than are today's virtual warriors).

Numerous studies have produced correlations and other statistical associations between media violence and aggression in children (43). Explanations include (1)
sanitization and desensitization
—after repeated exposure to violence, kids get used to witnessing cruelty and mayhem and grow less loath to use it; (2)
identification
—kids imitate whatever they see on-screen; (3)
arousal
—kids are unhealthily stimulated by media violence and perceive it as thrilling and something to be tried; and (4)
positive reinforcement
—kids learn from TV and the movies that violence is rewarded.

Though some statistical support has been obtained for all four suppositions,
not a single causal link between media violence and criminality has ever been produced.

Part of the reason for the failure to establish causation may be methodological: Television and motion picture viewing are ubiquitous—virtually every child in America and other Western cultures watches oodles of TV, so it is difficult to come up with control groups and to otherwise tease out specific effects of media violence. For that reason, most prospective media studies have taken place in laboratory settings where children are exposed to media images and then tested, using paper-and-pencil questionnaires or interviews, on their attitudes about violence and aggressiveness.

The problem with this approach is one that plagues social science research in general: laboratory experiments and field (“real-life”) studies have proven notoriously inconsistent. In fact, in certain areas of psychological inquiry, such as attitude change, results from lab research are often the
opposite
of those obtained by field studies, with the former concluding that attitudes are comparatively easy to modify while the latter find them resistant to change.

Lab/field discrepancies may be due to the artificial nature of the experimental setting: The experimenter overly controls the situation by projecting an air of authority that leads the subject to respond in a certain manner. In addition, the attitudes and behaviors measured in the lab are often constructed to be experimentally “clean”—unrelated to prior prejudices and relatively value-free. Unfortunately, this also means they have little or no relevance to the experimental subjects. It is fairly easy to change one's opinion about some trivial construct created by Professor Gadget, and quite another matter to modify one's deeply ingrained views on race and religion.

Another problem with media violence research involves applicability. Do the results of a questionnaire about some theoretical situation involving risk taking or aggressive problem solving filled out by a child who's just watched a violent cartoon have anything to do with real-life aggressiveness, let alone psychopathy or criminality?

Further clouding the issue are contradictory data, such as a lack of evidence of rising crime rates in comparatively nonviolent societies, such as Japan, following the introduction of TV, and the fact that the highest rates of recorded violence in today's world are found in regions, such as Latin America and Africa, where television viewing is
lower
than it is in the United States.

Yet other findings bring us back to the old correlation/causation snafu: Both degree of exposure and reactions to the violent images portrayed by TV and film appear to
interact
with the traits and characteristics that the child brings into the viewing situation.

For example, it has been found that highly aggressive boys watch more TV than nonaggressive boys and that they are affected more by what they see (44). This may be due to their lack of creativity and subsequent need for “canned” stimulation. It is also consistent with biological notions of psychopaths as chronically, physiologically understimulated emotional paupers who lack rich mental imagery and chase sensation.

Another reason high-risk boys may be the ones mostly attracted to the easy, passive stimulation provided by the visual media may be
parental incompetence
. We know that many violent kids are more likely to grow up in chaotic, neglectful, and abusive households, and to be exposed to drug and alcohol abuse. Perhaps the poorly raised boy, allowed to play hooky and to veg out at home, stoned or drunk, simply has more time available to sit glued to the tube.

Yet another potential complication is the possibility that children who grow up in the rotten households that practice and glamorize violence may be more likely to regard the violent imagery they see on the screen as comfortingly familiar. If so, the media are playing a reinforcing role rather than a generative one. While this is certainly harmful, it is the chaotic family that we should be addressing, rather than the media.

The importance of considering temperament, traits, and personality characteristics as they interact with media violence cannot be overemphasized. Let me offer a totally unscientific, but I believe instructive, example from my personal experience.

I have four children, three of whom are old enough to have viewed many popular violent movies, including numerous horror films. My eldest daughter, in particular, displayed an early attraction to motion pictures full of images I found disgusting and shocking. My wife and I were reluctant to let her watch these bloody flicks, but my daughter insisted they wouldn't harm her. Since she'd always been a delightful girl, we relented . . . and watched for problems. None followed. My eldest daughter passed through the splatter-flick phase and moved on to new fare. Never did she exhibit a trace of violence or antisocial behavior as a consequence of what she saw. Never did I observe
any
side effect of viewing, and this shrink dad was
looking
for symptoms. Years later, my eldest daughter remains an honor student and one of the sweetest, least violent people I've ever met.

My son and my second daughter never developed any idiosyncratic interest in violent films, but simply by being teenagers in contemporary America, they too were exposed to violence and gore at a level much more explicit than what I grew up with.

I recall viewing the classic Hitchcock film
Psycho
in my late teens and leaving the theater absolutely petrified. At its initial release,
Psycho
was considered a revolutionary film primarily because it ratcheted screen violence up several notches. Adults were terrified by the images Hitchcock purveyed, especially the famous shower stabbing scene. Some viewers were even reported to have experienced heart attacks.

When my three oldest watched
Psycho
—as
early
adolescents—the film barely raised their eyebrows, so mild did they find it compared to
Nightmare on Elm Street
,
Friday the 13th
,
Halloween
, and others.

Personal anecdotes are not scientific. But the absolute lack of effect upon my progeny of violent media images remains in stark contrast to all the warnings promulgated by would-be media-blamers. Yes, desensitization definitely occurred in my kids—lowering their anxiety about screen violence but not real-life violence—and I suspect the same is true of tens of millions of other kids, because while nearly all American children watch violent movies and TV, only a very minute percentage becomes criminal.

This is not to say media violence is harmless. To the extent that gory junk attracts high-risk youngsters, it's anything but. Is it possible that an already psychopathic boy with a head full of violent impulses that have festered since early childhood, sitting around the house sucking on a joint or sniffing glue while he watches
Scream
, can be spurred to imitate what he sees on the screen? Absolutely.

The same is true of printed violence—serial killers often collect violent pornography and true-crime magazines in order to heighten sexual arousal. But for these psychopaths, print images are used to stimulate associations between sexuality and violence that are already well developed. The overwhelming majority of people who read pornography and true-crime magazines are not serial killers, nor do they become serial killers because of what they encounter between the covers of
Shocking Detective
.

Given no bloody books, no Freddy Krueger on video, no thrash metal or gangsta rap, would Billy Rotten of bullying, cat-mutilating proclivities have picked up a knife and stabbed his mother anyway? No way to know for sure, but I'd bet yes. And the likelihood of Billy's engaging in serious violence somewhere along the line would remain extremely high no matter what he read or viewed, because the variables that strongly influence violent behavior are likely to be a lot more personal than those elicited by wielding the remote control.

Even granting that media violence affects some kids negatively, what can be done to fix the problem?

The best solution is obviously to have parents exercise good judgment and restrict access to nasty material in the case of a child who shows tendencies toward violence. But failure to limit TV is way at the bottom of the list of parental inadequacies experienced by high-risk kids.

We are certainly unlikely to put in place the large-scale solution that might partially handle the problem—widespread censorship foisted upon 99.9 percent of the population in order to shield a tiny minority—because that type of group punishment is antagonistic to our democratic norms, not to mention unconstitutional. And I emphasize
partially
, because any kind of blanket prohibition of violent films and shows will inevitably result in a black market of forbidden images, with those we are trying to shield most likely to get their hands on illegal goods.

A thorough and well-thought-out review of media violence and children summed it up wisely: “Aggression as a problem solving behavior is learned early in life, is usually learned well, and is resistant to change. Individual variation in the level of aggressive behavior and violence in children, adolescents and adults depends on many interacting factors of which media influences are likely to be less important than constitutional, parental, educational and other environmental influences. Contributing factors include being the victims of violence and bullying and witnessing violence perpetrated against others, especially at home. The emphasis on establishing whether television violence and actual violence are related has resulted in the neglect of these other, more important influences on the development of aggressive behaviors” (45).

Nevertheless, railing against the media is likely to continue as the knee-jerk response to child criminality because it is the type of facile, glib “explanation” that is perfectly in sync with today's short-attention-span journalism, and because it offends no constituency other than a small group of network executives and moguls. Using the media as a whipping boy is also extremely attractive to that most superficial and insincere group of “experts”—politicians—because it lends itself to sound bites and generates funding for the scores of do-nothing legislative commissions that pass for problem-solving units in a bureaucracy.

Though essentially a dead-end topic, media violence is likely to endure as a fruitful source of research grants for social scientists, producing much more heat than light about the causes and fixes of criminal violence.