BBC Horizon - What makes us Good or Evil (2/4)

The difference between a Normal Psychology and a Psychopathic one

Broadcast 7th September 2011 on BBC2

What makes us good or evil? It's a simple but deeply unsettling question. One that scientists are now starting to answer. Horizon meets the researchers who have studied some of the most terrifying people behind bars - psychopathic killers. But there was a shock in store for one of these scientists, Professor Jim Fallon, when he discovered that he had the profile of a psychopath. And the reason he didn't turn out to be a killer holds important lessons for all of us. We meet the scientist who believes he has found the moral molecule and the man who is using this new understanding to rewrite our ideas of crime and punishment.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• bbc
• bbc2
• horizon
• good
• and
• evil
• psychopath
• psychopathic
• jeffrey
• dahmer
• bradley

[RioLuna829]

If humans naturally hate doing harm, wouldn't it make more sense to find out how to keep the peace than to go to war?

[fidemservare]

killing to protect life??!! sarcastic

[RioLuna829]

@ThreeWordsFirstWord I appreciate your civil approach! And I have two comments. First, many civilizations were quite peaceful (over millenia). Indicating that humans can be peaceful. Second, even if war was our nature (and I'm arguing that it isn't), we do many things contrary to our nature. It isn't the nature of humans to sit in boring meetings but it does happen quite often, just for instance.

[ThreeWordsFirstWord]

@RioLuna829 because it is also innate within human beings to be at war...can you think of a single period in the world through the course of time since human beings have inhabited this earth where there has been global peacetime? No, because it is a primitive instinct to preserve, protect our environment from what we perceive to be an aggressor. It is interesting what you are saying but there is always another, darker side to the human condition that means we will never live in peace.

[longfootbuddy]

they have it ass backwards

[Redflowers9]

13:51

Is it Agnetha from ABBA? Is it one of the Bee Gees? Is it that time when your sister drew a moustache on her barbie doll? Is it a plane?

No, it's just your 'everyday, friendly psychopath'.

[temporary1121]

lol wtf is stupid ass shit?

[TheUndertakerSaysRIP]

Naturally, we are neither good or bad..... we are just like all other sentient lives; safety of our own survival comes before others

[vonbeano]

@merlinpix No one joins the army thinking "I am doing this for my country, and to lay down my life for my country." People rarely put their life on the line for other people, unless they are truly alturistic, and a martyr. You are no more deliberately laying down your life for our freedom, than a fisherman swept out to sea deliberately lays down his life for us to be fed. You really have no clue what you are fighting for have you.

[vonbeano]

@ThexSilverxsparrow Where do you live? Britain? America? We are ruled by psychopaths today. Hitler is very much alive today in the form of our modern day Western Government, who fund both sides of a war. Including WW2.

[vonbeano]

@44prot Because they are mindless drones fuelled by propaganda