Crime: Of the culture, By the culture or For the culture?

Ever since the first episode of the show aired on Netflix, Jeff Dahmer has, once again, become the talk of the town. For some of you who are not familiar with this name, Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer between the late 1970s and the early 1990s who murdered as many as seventeen men and boys and dismembered them. People who have watched the show, know the extent of the gory murders that he committed. Like everyone else that watched this show, the only recurring thought in my head was “Why?”. As I continued to watch it in the hope of getting an answer, I only felt disappointed, because I expected his motive to be greater and more purposeful than just the fact that he had no real motive but was just an atrocious person with an insatiable bloodlust.

While watching most serial killer— or let’s say crime documentaries— a person constantly wonders what the objective of that crime is and what factors influence the formation of these objectives. Through these TV shows, one can identify a constant attempt to understand these factors and their nature, whether they are psychological, biological, or even cultural. Man has been called a social animal by many philosophers, because of which we know that the culture that one has been raised in plays a significant role in their outlook towards the world and life. So, it is only natural to assume that cultural factors can be one of the many underlying causes of criminal behaviour. 

Culture, by definition, is an institution which comprises people that have similar customs and beliefs. If we focus on the ideology that focuses on the worth of a person versus that of a group’s, we see that cultures are either Individualist or Collectivist. Looking at individualist cultures like that of the US, they tend to assign more worth to a person than to society as a whole whereas in collectivist cultures, like that of Japan, do the exact opposite by valuing the group’s needs more and prioritising them over an individual’s needs. At this point, you may ask yourself how this is connected to criminal violence, and the answer lies in statistics. It has been observed that the total crimes in the US were 4 times more than the total crimes in Japan (1920-2015). The number of murders, in particular, were also 26 times more in the US as compared to Japan. In an attempt to identify the reason behind this disparity, we will look into the finer details. 

Setting a person’s needs above the  needs of a society can be attributed to the prime importance  given solely to the economy, which is one of the four basic pillars of a social institution. When everyone is left to fend for themselves, people would inevitably chase after money, and wouldn’t value the other components required to reach complete satisfaction in life. However, these ideas don’t just suddenly manifest in people, but are force fed to them starting right from their childhood. The different ways in which children are raised in individualistic and collectivist cultures bear sharp distinctions, and can sometimes act as  precursors for illegal activity. Dependency on family is taught early on in the latter, while the former aims to teach the child to be self-sufficient and more independent  in their nearing future. It is fair to say that the different ways in which cultures condone or condemn individualism, these cultures are reflected in the nature of their crimes as well.

To deal with their personal pain, some people from individualistic cultures commit crimes. These crimes are usually a means to get their needs met as these cultures focus on the economic part of success more, as mentioned before. Criminal behaviour, for them, can also be a medium to achieve Hedonism, which is a theory that highlights that the purpose of life is to increase personal pleasure and reduce pain. While hedonism does not have to be necessarily evil, a person can turn into an inherently selfish hedonist, by disregarding other people’s well-being, eventually leading to distorted thinking and criminal tendencies. An example to understand this would be none other than Jeff Dahmer. A lot of his motivation to kill came from the sheer sexual pleasure that he derived from his victims. To maximise his pleasure, he murdered them and tried to turn them into ‘zombies’ that would not have an independent thinking capacity. The profuse amount of pleasure eventually drove him to become a serial killer. Another notable mention of a hedonistic serial killer is Edward Kemper, who murdered ten women and girls for sexual gratification, and also exhibited necrophilia.

Although the tendency of people to be dependent on their family in collectivistic cultures has been considered to be beneficial to keep crime under check, it cannot be denied that crimes, no matter how less, still persist in these cultures. Offenders from collectivistic backgrounds are noticed to have group-oriented reasons for their crimes. They have been found to usually have committed them for two main reasons; one, to stand up for the group and their perceived morals, and the second–to ‘save face’. While being a part of a group, all members’ actions become representative of the group. Upon facing a situation which raises questions on the group’s morality and ideology, these people would be motivated to engage in illegal activity. A very popular example, that most of us can think of off the top of our heads, is terrorist organizations. These organizations usually derive their motivations from their collectivist ideologies, having a faint sense of what is moral and immoral. 

Given that cultures have innumerable elements, only talking about individualist and collectivist cultures provides very limited insight into the criminal mind. Even after knowing what we know now about the cultural influences towards criminal mentality, we still cannot hold culture solely accountable for its occurrences. Trying to completely understand criminal behaviour is an interminable process, and evaluating and gauging the cultural aspect is just one step along the way. 

About the Author

Tanveer Saini

Member of PsyCreative Column

Psychology Committee, SDSOS, NMIMS

Tanveer is currently a first-year student studying BSc Applied Psychology. She considers herself to be introverted but loves filling awkward silences. She can be weirdly insightful about things you would imagine her last to be. She likes preserving her energy and derives most of it through activities like reading, journaling and swimming. She is extremely reliable and trustworthy, an

is a better friend than she thinks she is. Oh, and she absolutely adores dogs.