To help the world understand why humans perform certain actions, we have to study the human mind. Specifically fields that will help progress mankind. Trying to understand why psychopaths and borderline personality disorder's commit the crimes that they do is an important step in the direction of preventing it. The article, "Emotion in Criminal Offenders With Psychopathy and Borderline Personality Disorder" addresses this field accurately. Although it focuses on the physiological aspects of this field, it will help understand it.
             This study was performed because the authors felt that criminal offenders that are diagnosed with psychopathy and/or borderline personality disorder share an unprompted nature that tends to differ from "normal" humans. They (the authors) aim to prove that criminals with Psychopathy and borderline personality disorder will have different responses to unpleasant and pleasant stimuli than the control group. This is my guess at the general hypothesis the authors were going for. The article states, "Compared with controls, psychopaths were characterized by decreased electrodermal responsiveness, less facial expression, and the absence of affective startle modulation." (737)
             The methods that the authors used to conduct this study were as follows:
             Twenty-five psychopaths as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and 18 subjects with BPD from 2 high-security forensic treatment facilities were included in the study along with 24 control subjects. Electrodermal response was used as an indicator of emotional arousal, modulation of the startle reflex as a measure of valence, and electromyographic activity of the corrugator muscle as an index of emotional expression. I know that we were supposed to answer that question in our own words, however I felt that the authors knew much more than me about this specific experiment and that their words could portray the idea much...