The Murderer Next Door

I have just begun reading a book titled The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill by David Buss. This book is-from what I know-trying to explain that killers aren't typically what we think of. That being, most murderers are not someone who has been locked up before, because they are such a 'hardened' criminal. Actually, Buss argues that most people who commit murder are what most people would call 'normal', but through certain circumstances and traits we as humans evolved into, we commit a murder.

But who is David Buss, why does he matter and what has he done? Well, David Buss earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Berkeley and is currently a professor of Psychology at The University of Texas in Austin, but he has been an assistant professor at Harvard for four years and a professor at the University of Michigan for eleven years. He has written many papers and some books, and he has received awards for his writings-so this guy is definitely the real deal. So, I'll be giving updates periodically on what he's talking about in the book and what I think about his it.

First Impressions Video

So here is a video about first impressions. If you like guessing, then you can go to youtube.com and key in 'first impressions' and find videos just like this with different people.

Is your Face Trustworthy?

Okay, so I was looking around and stumbled across this article from PsychologyToday.com which was talking about perception and a persons face. Walking around school, work, or anywhere you see all kinds of people, and with just one quick glance you immediately have a 'feeling' of the person you saw. Whether it's good, bad, or somewhere in between we all do it (and don't lie, you know you have). I wouldn't say it's a shameful thing to do, but most of the time our first impression isn't right (think of the saying 'You can't always judge a book by its cover') which is why you can't rely solely on a persons appearance.

The article itself was explaining that sometimes we internally judge someone by the width of a persons face. The experiment was a trust game, where one guy would be given $5 and would be given a choice to keep the money or 'invest' which would mean they would give it to another person. If they kept the money then there would be no risk and would be ahead $5, but if they did invest the only thing they had to go on was a picture of the person they would be giving the money to, and that person would get $10 and could either spilt and give half back to the 'investor' or keep it all for themselves. I actually did a similar game in AP Psych which my group ended up trusting the other group and we lost all of our money.

The end results were that women actually had no correlation in how they deemed someone trustworthy. But men on the other hand actually had a fairly strong correlation between trustworthiness and facial width. The wider the face, the less a man would trust to invest with him.

In the article it had two computer rendered images a a mans' face, one that was slightly wider than the other. Looking at them I can kinda see that a wider face-to me at least-might seem more menacing I suppose than the thinner face, but I might just think that because I just got done reading an article telling me I internally think that. But just don't go around now and not trust anyone with a wide face, because it is just what we perceive, not what is real and true.

My Job Inspiration

Since we were little we've all been asked 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' and it never really meant anything until about freshman year in high school. The time when it hits us is different but we all get that feeling of 'what do I want to do with my life?' And I never gave it too much thought, always putting it in the back of my mind for later deliberation, but with every passing day that question came edging closer and closer to the front of my mind. Then in junior year, when they start telling you to think about college now, it hit me, and I was left with a lot of questions and a feeling that I knew wouldn't go away until I could answer truthfully what I wanted to do when I grow up.

I had decided to take AP Psychology mostly because I had heard it was an easy class, but I was also intrigued about the subject itself. I thought it would be cool if I could know what people where thinking-which wasn't exactly what I ended up learning. Taking that class was my favorite class all year (sorry Mr. Ayers, but I know AP Lang helped me way more overall) and I wanted to know more about how people operate and how they interact with each other. What lead me more interested in profiling than being some sort of psychiatrist was that I wanted to help people in whatever I do. I want to help put the worst of the worst guys away, and through some research-and maybe a TV show- I eventually ended up with criminal profiling.

I have changed my mind in the past, and I'm not 100% sure if criminal profiling is 'my calling', but hopefully this blog will help me decide if this is really what I want to do or not. Or maybe it will even let me stumble on something I like/want to do even more.