What causes people to just "snap like that?"

[DJDamage]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny-santashooting1226,0,7517424.story

I am really curious at this story due its horrific and appalling nature. How can people who go through their lives act/be normal and just all of the sudden snap like that?! how sick can you possibly be to dress up as santa and then when an 8 year old girl opens the door, you shoot her in the face like its nothing and then continue with the rampage?!! I can't even wrap my head around it.

I mean did those people grow up to be normal and healthy indvidual's (whatever that means) and then gradually became sadistic?! or were they always deep down sadistic and just hid it well until it grew and they couldn't control it anymore?!

 

[KontrollerX]

AFC mentality + uncaring society + man that is recently S.O.L due to factors completely out of his control= recipe for disaster.

And to answer your second question both of the things you brought up in it can bring about situations like this one.

Indeed either a person can be a severely fvcked up sociopath who planned this horrific end years in advance to shock the world or it can be a normal person who let anger and resentment build up inside of themselves until it got out of control or it can be a normal person that is met with an incredible amount of stress and humiliation all at once and has no one or no system at all to go to for justice so they lash out and create their own form of destructive vigilante justice or all the immediate stress, anger and humiliation literally causes them to go insane enough with rage and whatever else to do something like this.

Yeah though I don't think we can really pick out just one of these reasons for why things like this happen.

The exact answer of course always pertains to the individual and unless they leave a suicide note with reasons we can only speculate.

 

[PrettyBoyA]

Yeah this incident reminded me of the Chris Benoit incident. People who have no history of these kind of acts and suddenly snap...

 

[thedeparted]

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy

Any man is capable of murder -- and mass murder -- of civilians, women and children. Witness the actions of soldiers in war. The Japanese in Nanking. Americans in My Lai. Germans all over the place.

Social psychology has established some of the factors that make this happen. Authority. Stress. In group/out-group dynamics. Etc. Now just apply the same factors to an individual in peace time and you'll get the same results.

There is no justifying mass murder. But -- just like Hitler and the Nazis, who responded to the harsh terms of the WWI settlement and 30's depression -- it is easy to see what triggers it. This man was made to give his ex-wife a large cash settlement, plus a large monthly stipend, plus his favorite dog. And he had to do so when he had no job and no hope. And she rubbed it in his face by buying a fancy new car, gambling in Vegas, etc. Basically, the court and the ex-wife kicked him while he was down and out. And he snapped.

That doesn't make it any more right than Nazi genocide as a response to economic malaise. But if we wish to avoid outcomes like this we should consider avoiding their triggers, and treating men and women equally in divorce court.

 

[War Against Betaism]

I think it also has to do with an overall weak mentality, the article mentions that he lived alone, might be because he is deprived of "love" (I didn't read all of the entire article yet though). People don't realize it but human touch and communication is what makes people sane, I read an article that made the analogy that people who go "insane" are just another form of babies crying who need attention.

 

[darkstarrr]

I read an article that made the analogy that people who go "insane" are just another form of babies crying who need attention.

i'd like to read that article. what a tragedy that happened there. this came on the news at my house on christmas and my family discussed it briefly before we put another bond movie in. it really is amazing how people can just pop under the right set of circumstances. those circumstances can be slightly different from person to person, but jees. i think $hit like this should be a wake up call for our society/culture.

what could have prevented this though? what went wrong? where did the downward spiral begin? bad breakup? was she cruel to him? did he do something to start it all? or were they just not meant to be? he lost his job suddenly it seems.. did he get depressed and was not longer able to go to work? was there something the courts could have handled just a little differently to take into account the amount of stress and heartache the guy was potentially enduring? how come noone saw any warning signs and stepped in to help the guy before he went off the deep end?

what jumped out for my family was hearing on the news how he had no history of violence and no criminal record. also, one of his ex's came forward and said he was a sweet and nice guy and she never imagined he could do such a thing.

the human psyche can be a very delicate and unstable thing. we all need to be nicer to and more understanding of each other. make love not war.

 

[Deep Dish]

In college, I majored in criminal justice with an emphasis on criminal profiling. I took classes on Criminal Profiling, Serial Murder, Abnormal Psychology, Sexual Offenders, and Terrorism. (And, unfortunately, criminal profiling jobs don't actually exist.)

There are three types of multi-murderers: spree murderers, mass murderers, and serial murderers. There are academic disputes over the classifications, but generally speaking the consensus leans towards a minimum of three murders, and: spree murderers kill at least three people in different locations under 30 days, serial murderers kill at least three people in different locations over 30 days, and not to be redundant the definition of mass murderers is self-evident. Each classification has different psychological profiles and its own considerations. Bruce Pardo qualifies as a mass murderer, but beyond that we have far insufficient information to form an accurate and reliable assessment of his psychological profile. Armchair profiling is fun but has the reliability of monkeys throwing darts in a pub.

DJDamage:
Did those people grow up to be normal and healthy indvidual's (whatever that means) and then gradually became sadistic?! Or were they always deep down sadistic and just hid it well until it grew and they couldn't control it anymore?!

Academia leans towards the former. Good people turn sour.

War Against Betaism:
I read an article that made the analogy that people who go "insane" are just another form of babies crying who need attention.

I would also like to read the article, because at face value I would disagree with the characterization. It's a grotesque oversimplification of complex psychology.

Darkstarrr:
What could have prevented this though?... How come noone saw any warning signs and stepped in to help the guy before he went off the deep end?

This may or may not have been preventable, and there may or may not have been any warning signs. Social science has yet to pin down what exact unique traits separate spree, serial, and mass murderers from the general population. Evidentiary associations and relationships have been identified, such as alcoholism and (for serial murderers) the terrible trio of fire-setting, torturing animals, and wetting the bed as a kid (really); but succinctly to say, answers are still inconclusive.

 

[War Against Betaism]

I wish I could reread it myself but it was a long time ago and forgot the link.

 

[Da Realist]

There's a story about samurai who made a bet with his retainer that any man can become a fierce warrior under any circumstance. To prove it, the samurai found a prisoner, took him outside, dropped a sword in front of him, and told him if he survives he gets to go free. The prisoner picked up the sword and fought so hard that even the samurai had a hard time defending himself. In the end, the samurai himself became desparate and had to kill the man to end the fight. People wonder how people snap when the answer is simple: they get pushed into it somehow. I'm not going to make an excuse for the guy, but if someone took everything in your life away, what other way is there to get revenge? On the other hand, try not to place a lot of your happiness in people or things, because it all can go. I know it's preachy, but this world is out to get everything that it can out of a person and it's in anybody's self interest to hold on to the stuff that is worth it.