We have all seen pictures of people like Charles Manson, Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy, horrible people and infamous killers. To people who have never experienced something like this, the thought is, “How did they become this way? How could someone ever want to kill someone else?” The answers to these questions are hard to completely understand, but the answers can be broken down into three categories to simplify the explanation; physical, mental and social reasons. But even though we broke them down there are still a lot of reasons of why and how someone becomes a killer. Naturally, your brain makes it hard to cause anyone any pain. “The human brain is coded for compassion, for guilt, for a kind of empathic pain that causes the person inflicting harm to feel a degree of suffering that is in many ways as intense as what the victim is experiencing” (Kluger). In a study done by Pascal Molenberghs of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, described in a Time Magazine article, 48 individuals were asked to watch films of a soldier shooting a civilian, a soldier shooting another soldier and the soldier just shooting his gun while scientists watched their brain activity. When the test subjects watched the film of the soldier shooting the civilian, their brain activity was the same as someone who …show more content…
When a child is exposed to abuse while they are developing, it can cause long-term negative effects to the individual. “Physical consequences, such as damage to a child’s growing brain, can have psychological implications, such as cognitive delays or emotional difficulties”(Child Welfare Information Gateway). These “delays” and “difficulties” will play into the development of a killer. Carroll Edward Cole was a serial killer who was forced to wear female clothes and abused by his mother (Gabrielle, Lieber). This physical abuse would affect Cole negatively, resulting in his serial