If I were to interview one of the authors of Love Deprivation, Wechsler Performance>Verbal Discrepancy and Violent Delinquency, Dr. Anthony Walsh would relate this character activity to the need of love and acceptance. Walsh and his colleagues linked both of these needs to violence. The Kite Runner features a sociopath Assef, who ultimately enjoys inflicting pain on others. The study carried out is able to shed light on Assef's actions throughout the book. When we meet Assef's parents, we realize that they don't shower him with love. When the family enters Amir's birthday party, they enter "as if he were the parent and they were his children" (Hosseini 95). Midway through the conversation with Assef and his parents, Amir wonders if “on some level, their son scared them” (Hosseini 96). These two points in the novel lead people to believe that Assef's parents do not give him enough love, thus explaining his violent behavior. Walsh would say that Assef's actions are explained by this experience. The results they found proved that lack of love “has a stronger impact on violent delinquency than any other variable” (Walsh, Beyer, Petee 181). Throughout the book, Assef's sociopathic actions are seen as his lack of guilt and violent behavior. Walsh found that psychopaths, who share many of the same characteristics as sociopaths, "have low hemispheric arousal" and that aggression is linked to "the inferiority of the left hemisphere relative to the capacity of the right hemisphere”, which explains its behavior (Walsh, Beyer, Petee 179). . So there is another reason for Assef's sociopathic actions, linked once again to the ultimate cause of love.