# How Is A Criminal Mind Developed?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-a-criminal-mind-developed/208906>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [October 22, 2003, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-a-criminal-mind-developed/208906 "2003-10-22T14:40:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\
**Post date:** [November 28, 2023, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-a-criminal-mind-developed/208906/61 "2023-11-28T18:45:22Z")

</div>

> [@Roderick\_Femm](#):
>
> The counter to sociopathy seems to be empathy, as noted in earlier posts. Feelings of empathy may well be more easily developed by some people than by others, but I think everyone has to learn it somehow, if they are going to feel it.

I don’t believe you can teach people to feel something they don’t have; you can get many people to expand or tone down on what comes naturally, but it’s not like learning math or navigation where they just give you a map, teach some rules, and then you simply get it.

For example, I’ve always been usually empathetic, even compared to most women (I took a proper personality test so I’m not just guessing at this). Nobody ever taught it to me, and in fact I was raised in a pretty nasty and manipulative household. I had very good anitsocial “training”, yet still ended up unusually empathetic despite that, even to this day.

I’ve paid for it believe me; excessive empathy in men is NOT a good thing, at least for the guy himself. And to make the point even more, I’ve been paying a price for my natural character trait for as long as I can remember and have been given advice to be more selfish and so forth for decades. It’s not like I just was never told that I leaned too in one direction; I’ve been told over and over. Yet I still have to force myself to act in a more “normal” manner regarding empathy. Even today and for the rest of my life, when I’m acting “normal” it feels like I’m being a jerk; it will never feel proper - so it’s not just a matter of learning how to add numbers and then poof you can do math like everyone else.

Trying to educate character traits into people, especially the unwilling, is a hopeless cause. I say the best you can do is help the willing improve or refine what they were born with.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\
**Post date:** [November 30, 2023, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-a-criminal-mind-developed/208906/62 "2023-11-30T20:25:09Z")

</div>

Does someone really develop a criminal mind of just fail to develop proper social attitudes? Most criminals I know are extremely immature.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-a-criminal-mind-developed/208906.md?page=3)