Ep. 189 - The Doctor Is In Series - Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together

Welcome to the Social-Engineer Podcast: The Doctor Is In Series – where we will discuss understandings and developments in the field of psychology.  

 

In today’s episode, Chris and Abbie are discussing: Natural born killers, or monsters in the making? 

We are all curious about the origins of evil and violence. We see a story on the news and ask ourselves, how could anyone do that? So, let’s dive into how. We are not going to cover specific cases and talk about specific serial killers, because you lose the science and we “celebritize” serial killers.  [Dec 05, 2022] 

 

00:00 – Intro 

00:19 – Dr. Abbie Maroño Intro 

00:52 – Intro Links 

• Social-Engineer.com - http://www.social-engineer.com/ 
• Managed Voice Phishing - https://www.social-engineer.com/services/vishing-service/ 

• Managed Email Phishing - https://www.social-engineer.com/services/se-phishing-service/ 
• Adversarial Simulations - https://www.social-engineer.com/services/social-engineering-penetration-test/ 
• Social-Engineer channel on SLACK - https://social-engineering-hq.slack.com/ssb 
• CLUTCH - http://www.pro-rock.com/ 
• innocentlivesfoundation.org - http://www.innocentlivesfoundation.org/ 

03:37 – The topic of the day: Natural born killers, or monsters in the making? 

04:48 – Born this way? 

08:25 – The "X" Factor 

10:11 – Self-soothing 

13:18 – The importance of Anxiety 

14:34 – Made by the military 

15:23 – You can't pick and choose 

18:18 – Gag reflex 

19:50 – Who's to blame? 

20:59 – The "Criminal Gene" fallacy 

24:39 – A happy ending 

26:50 – “This isn't set in stone” 

29:31 – Silver Linings 

31:13 – “It's a bit of both” 

32:02 – Misguided markers 

35:42 – Is there prevention? 

39:05 – Minority Report 

41:18 – An unsupportive system 

42:34 – Touch is vital! 

45:26 – An interesting (NOT FUN!) quote 

46:27 – Wrap Up 

47:07 – The request lines are open! 

47:35 – Outro 

• www.social-engineer.com 
• www.innocentlivesfoundation.org 

 

 

Find us online: 

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/abbiejmarono 
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dr-abbie-maroño-phd-35ab2611a 

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/humanhacker 
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christopherhadnagy 

 

References: 

Entail, W. D. A. S. K. (2021). Are Serial Killers Born or Made?. 

 

Johnson, B. R., & Becker, J. V. (1997). Natural born killers?: The development of the sexually sadistic serial killer. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online, 25(3), 335-348. 

 

Ioana, I. M. (2013). No one is born a serial killer!. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 81, 324-328. 

 

Mitchell, H., & Aamodt, M. G. (2005). The incidence of child abuse in serial killers. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 20(1), 40-47. 

 

Miller, L. (2014). Serial killers: I. Subtypes, patterns, and motives. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 19(1), 1-11. 

 

Wiest, J. B. (2016). Casting cultural monsters: Representations of serial killers in US and UK news media. Howard Journal of Communications, 27(4), 327-346. 

 

Wrangham, R. W., Wilson, M. L., & Muller, M. N. (2006). Comparative rates of violence in chimpanzees and humans. Primates, 47(1), 14-26. 

 

Newton-Fisher, N. E., & Thompson, M. E. (2012). Comparative evolutionary perspectives on violence. 

 

Marono, A. J., Reid, S., Yaksic, E., & Keatley, D. A. (2020). A behaviour sequence analysis of serial killers’ lives: From childhood abuse to methods of murder. Psychiatry, psychology and law, 27(1), 126-137. 

 

Marono, A., & Keatley, D. A. (2022). An investigation into the association between cannibalism and serial killers. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 1-12. 

 

Entail, W. D. A. S. K. (2021). Are Serial Killers Born or Made?. 

 

Njelesani, J., Hashemi, G., Cameron, C., Cameron, D., Richard, D., & Parnes, P. (2018). From the day they are born: a qualitative study exploring violence against children with disabilities in West Africa. BMC public health, 18(1), 1-7. 

 

Boyle, K. (2001). What's natural about killing? Gender, copycat violence and Natural Born Killers. Journal of Gender Studies, 10(3), 311-321. 

 

Formosa, P. (2008). The problems with evil. Contemporary Political Theory, 7(4), 395-415.