The Absence of Positive Psychosocial Characteristics in the Lives of Mass School Shooters
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The Absence of Positive Psychosocial Characteristics in the Lives of Mass School Shooters Paul C. Vitz1 · Amanda Aulbaugh Faria1 Accepted: 25 October 2020 © Society for Police and Criminal Psychology 2020
Abstract This article summarizes psychological and social characteristics of mass or rampage school shooters. The sample of mostly teen-age males, N=20, wasrestricted to Americans whose shooting was at a secondary school, not college. Many negative characteristics of these or similar shooters already in theliterature were identified in our sample, e.g. obsession with violence, depression, family problems. Also, attention was paid to the possible presence ofpositive characteristics, such as having an active, important goal in sports, the media, professions, or an active participation in pro-social groups at school orin prosocial groups in the community. Not one example of such positive characteristics was found in the biographical material for any shooter in thesample. It was concluded that the absence of positive meaning is an important factor in the lives of school shooters; vaious possible positive responses tothis issue are briefly noted.
Introduction In this article, we summarize and comment on evidence about the characteristics of school shooters, specifically mass or rampage shooters. By mass school shooters, we take the following definition given by Newman et al. (2004) and recommended by Elsass et al. (2016). This definition of rampage shooting events, here called mass shooting events, is that they “take place on a school-related public stage before an audience; involve multiple victims, some of whom are shot simply for their symbolic significance or at random; and involve one or more shooters who are students or former students of the school” (Newman et al. 2004; cited by Elsass et al. 2016, p. 458). Faria (2018) and this study also include shooters who were not students or former students but were closely associated with the school shooting site. This excludes shooting only one person; shootings where no one was actually shot; gang-based shootings; and revenge shootings that targeted specific individuals without a random component, e.g., Michael Corneal who targeted all his victims. These restrictions were used in order to have a relatively uniform sample that could yield some reliable conclusions. In addition, the present sample is restricted to * Paul C. Vitz [email protected] 1
Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Divine Mercy University, 45154 Underwood Ln., Sterling, VA 20166, USA
school shooters in the USA to keep the social and cultural environment relatively the same. Our evidence will be based primarily on Faria’s (2018) findings (her case histories of nineteen shooters, Sect. 3, are attached here in an appendix), but other sources will also be referenced and the information on Dimitrios Pagourtzis, the shooter at the Santa Fe, TX, high school, will be new information since his shootings occurred after Faria had completed her study. Still, more recent information about Devo
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