I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that someone who attacked strangers for no apparent reason was experiencing delusions or hallucinations. I would be surprised to hear that someone with sociopathy did so, because they normally hurt people only for personal gain, and there’s nothing to gain from opening fire on a crowd.
If you know that someone is a mass murderer, it should give you a high posterior probability assessment for mental illness, but not a high probability assessment for schizophrenia.
Most sociopaths are not mass murderers or serial killers, but as best I can determine (I’ve found articles that allude to it, but none that give an actual percentage, and wikipedia pages for individual mass murderers seem to support it) most mass murderers and serial killers are sociopaths. However, most mass murderers and serial killers are not schizophrenics, although it seems that a significantly greater proportion of serial killers and mass murderers are schizophrenics than the proportion of the population in non mass murderers or serial killers.
Sorry, you’re right. I spent last year working on a psych ward, and I agree that most people with schizophrenia are unlikely to hurt others.
My guess is that mass murderers with some ideological or practical reason for choosing the people they murder are more likely to be sociopaths. I can’t think of a reason to target people at a movie theater, which makes me put a higher prior on delusions or hallucinations in this case.
Well, given the specific evidence that the culprit dressed up and identified himself as the Joker and informed the police that he had booby trapped his apartment, I’d assign a high probability of schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t write off preference based reasons for a sociopath to gun people down at a movie theater in general. It could be motivated by a fantasy rather than a delusion of the perpetrator. Winston Moseley, for instance, sexually assaulted and killed Kitty Genovese and two other women because he had violent sexual fantasies. Alyssa Bustamante (who I read about recently while looking up information on young female murderers,) committed premeditated murder by her own testimony because she wanted to know what it felt like. Personally, I sometimes find myself frustrated at the ineptitude of both terrorists and the Department of Homeland Security, and have thoughts along the lines of “that’s pathetic, I could show them how it’s done,” (I consider this to be one of the manifestations of my imp of the perverse,) but I’m not inclined to do it because I don’t want to terrorize the population. If I were a sociopath, on the other hand, I might actually be tempted to do it.
Other people’s preferences are not necessarily going to be relatable. Even if there’s no potential for profit or cause for vengeance, for the right sort of person, murder could be a thrill activity, like skydiving (another example of something people do for pleasure that other people can’t imagine why one would ever want to do it.)
People with schizophrenia usually do not attack people for no reason either. The independent association of schizophrenia with violent behavior is low, and most of the difference in rates of violence between schizophrenics and non schizophrenics seems to be attributable to the higher rate of substance abuse among schizophrenics.
If you know that someone is a mass murderer, it should give you a high posterior probability assessment for mental illness, but not a high probability assessment for schizophrenia.
Most sociopaths are not mass murderers or serial killers, but as best I can determine (I’ve found articles that allude to it, but none that give an actual percentage, and wikipedia pages for individual mass murderers seem to support it) most mass murderers and serial killers are sociopaths. However, most mass murderers and serial killers are not schizophrenics, although it seems that a significantly greater proportion of serial killers and mass murderers are schizophrenics than the proportion of the population in non mass murderers or serial killers.
Sorry, you’re right. I spent last year working on a psych ward, and I agree that most people with schizophrenia are unlikely to hurt others.
My guess is that mass murderers with some ideological or practical reason for choosing the people they murder are more likely to be sociopaths. I can’t think of a reason to target people at a movie theater, which makes me put a higher prior on delusions or hallucinations in this case.
Well, given the specific evidence that the culprit dressed up and identified himself as the Joker and informed the police that he had booby trapped his apartment, I’d assign a high probability of schizophrenia, but I wouldn’t write off preference based reasons for a sociopath to gun people down at a movie theater in general. It could be motivated by a fantasy rather than a delusion of the perpetrator. Winston Moseley, for instance, sexually assaulted and killed Kitty Genovese and two other women because he had violent sexual fantasies. Alyssa Bustamante (who I read about recently while looking up information on young female murderers,) committed premeditated murder by her own testimony because she wanted to know what it felt like. Personally, I sometimes find myself frustrated at the ineptitude of both terrorists and the Department of Homeland Security, and have thoughts along the lines of “that’s pathetic, I could show them how it’s done,” (I consider this to be one of the manifestations of my imp of the perverse,) but I’m not inclined to do it because I don’t want to terrorize the population. If I were a sociopath, on the other hand, I might actually be tempted to do it.
Other people’s preferences are not necessarily going to be relatable. Even if there’s no potential for profit or cause for vengeance, for the right sort of person, murder could be a thrill activity, like skydiving (another example of something people do for pleasure that other people can’t imagine why one would ever want to do it.)