Psychology, Crime, and Violence

"In our last Forensic View blog post, we saw how anomalies in the human prefrontal cortex can contribute to impulsive behavior, which in turn may contribute to crimes of violence. This is certainly true, and it fits comfortably within an implicit modern view of humanity as quintessentially good. However, since some criminal behaviors (other than crimes for gain, for which the motivations are obvious) do not derive from impulsive failures, we must then seek out additional explanations (e.g., Sharps, 2024)."

"This was especially problematic for Renaissance humanists, whose philosophy, though it was embraced by many religious intellectuals, flew directly in the face of religious teachings which held that humans were quintessentially evil and had to be redeemed by good works or through faith. Humanists needed humanity, rather than God, to become the virtuous core of their considerations. So, the problem of human evil had to be excised;"

Anomalies in the prefrontal cortex can produce impulsive behaviors that increase risk for violent crime. Such neurobiological and psychological causes explain some violent acts, particularly those linked to impulse-control failures. Many criminal behaviors do not stem from impulsivity and therefore require alternative explanatory frameworks beyond neurological deficits. The assumption of innate human goodness in humanistic psychology, influenced in part by Renaissance humanism, can bias interpretation toward virtue and underrecognize human evil. Renaissance humanists minimized the problem of inherent human evil to prioritize human virtue. Historical examples, such as the Melian Dialogue, serve as cautionary lessons for researchers of crime and violence.

Read at Psychology Today