Re: Inherited Serial Killer Tendencies
Don't rule it out completely...there's a bit of a debate raging between certain biologists about "evolutionary psychology," i.e., whether or not we inherit personality traits from our parents. Obviously this offends a lot of people, particularly since it's at odds with the idea that we're all born equal, but there is a growing amount of evidence for the idea that certain characteristics "run in the family" - e.g., above- or below-average intelligence, aggressive behaviour, depression, other mental illnesses, even homosexuality (though this one runs less successfully for obvious reasons) - so they've probably done the usual scriptwriter's thing of taking a tentative theory and grossly over-extrapolating.
(LongJohnBaldry, Wed 18 Nov 2009, 12:28, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

Firstly that's not what evolutionary psychology is.
Secondly, inheriting charateristics and personality traits such as violence a lack of empathy etc, is totally different from inheriting behaviour patterns, like killing people.
(PsychoChomp, Wed 18 Nov 2009, 12:36, Reply)

Yes, that's true
That's why I said the scriptwriters would have grossly over-extrapolated. If anything, you'd probably expect an "inherited" behaviour pattern to be due to environmental influences than genetic, so not really "inherited" in the sense of the word we're discussing here.

And I admit my understanding of the distinction between inheriting character traits and evolutionary psychology is ropey (I realise the two are related but not the same), having not read all that much about it. I just thought I'd throw the idea in there for general interest.
(LongJohnBaldry, Wed 18 Nov 2009, 13:15, Reply)