Topics: Psychology, Crime, Mental Health, True crime
Have you ever felt like you could kill someone? Lots of us might feels like this from time to time, but a criminal psychologist has explained whether some people are built to kill, or if we all have that demon inside of us.
You might have had a bad day followed by an even worse argument and found yourself plotting someone's demise, but for most people, this fantasy of revenge remains just that, a fantasy.
But, should the right set of circumstances unfold, does everyone have the capacity to kill?
It is certainly true from years of crime data that men are overwhelmingly more likely to carry out a murder than a woman, with 90 percent of homicides in the US committed by men.
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Dr Shaw, a psychologist and true crime podcaster, told us: "It's something I get asked all the time right? Why did this person kill and do I as an individual have the capacity to do the same thing?
"And the short answer is, I do think everyone does have the capacity, but not everyone has the capacity right now."
In a conversation with LADbible TV, the German-Canadian criminologist, who has also laid out how to spot a narcissist with one very simple question, argued that everyone could be a killer, in the right circumstances.
She explained: "So I don't think for me today, I think it's unlikely that I will be capable of killing somebody, certainly of murdering someone who isn't attacking me.
"But if I add a couple of risk factors in, things like suddenly maybe I've lost my job, maybe I'm suffering with poverty, maybe I get into drugs, maybe I meet some new friends who are making bad choices."
These difficult life situations do not turn you into a killer and neither does a troubled childhood, the 38-year-old expert argued in her interview. But these circumstances can be viewed as 'risk factors' for murder.
Dr Shaw elaborated: "Maybe I get really bad at anger management because my life is getting more complicated and I'm making more rash and more angry decisions.
"And so murder in particular is almost always because of a fight that gets out of control."
According to crime data from the CDC, the majority of murders come with little forethought, with one in three recorded killings being precipitated by an argument or other conflict, and a further 22.9 percent of murders occurring in the midst of or immediately following some other criminal activity like a robbery or drug deal.
Around one in seven murders take place in a domestic situation, where women are five times as likely to be the victim.
This is rarely reflected in representations of murder in the media, where killers are often shown carrying out their evil acts with meticulous planning and forethought. This can give people the wrong idea about who has the ability to take someone else's life.
"It's not very common that someone, like on TV, is sharpening their knives or polishing their guns, waiting to kill a specific person, that's not really a thing that happens," Dr Shaw explained, adding: "And so, it's that anger management, it's that mental health, it's that ability to work through struggles that matters more.
So if those struggles enter your life, my life, I think, yes, I am capable of killing people and so are you."
Dr Shaw previously revealed the question you should ask any suspected narcissists in your life to reveal if they actually had the personality disorder - and her advice was to be surprisingly direct.
"How do you spot a narcissist? Ask them," she explained. "A narcissist would probably answer to this question, 'Yeah but like, I am better than most people. It's a realistic appraisal of myself,' because that's what narcissism is.
"It's that overconfidence, it's that thinking you're great and thinking you're better than you actually are."
