Hancock

• Aim

  • examine the language characteristics of psychopaths when describing their violent crimes on 3 major characteristics

  1. Instrumental nature = view world and others as theirs for the taking
  2. Unique material needs = satisfying basic needs - sex, food, shelter - is more important than meaningful things like relationships, spirituality and self esteem
  3. Emotional deficit = deficit in ability to experience emotions themselves and to recognise the emotions that others are feelings
• Sample

  • 52 male offenders - 14 psycho 38 non psycho
  • all being held for murder
  • all admitted their crime and volunteered
• Materials

  • Measured using Hares psychotherapy checklist revised
  • characterised by 20 criteria each scored from 0-2
  • maximum score of 40
  • At least 30 to be psycho
  • High reliability between 2 raters ( 0.94 )
• Procedure

  • used cut off score of 25
  • Participants interviewed - purpose of the study was to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their offence and were asked to describe the crime in as much detail as possible
  • Encouraged to give as much information
  • Procedure lasted 25 minutes
  • Interviewers blind to psychopathy scores
• Two text Analysis tools used:

  1. Wmatrix used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic concepts - meaning behind words
  2. DAL software used to examine effective tone of words. Assesses emotional properties of language and scores
• Results

  • Psychopaths averaged 2,201 words per person
  • Non psychopaths averaged 2,554 per person

  1. Instrumental language analysis - psychopaths produced significantly more subordinating conjunctions
  2. Hierarchy of needs analysis / socioemotional and unique needs - significantly more words connected to basic psychological needs of humans
  3. Emotional expression - Speech by psychopaths produced 33% moire disfluencies. Psychopaths used significantly more passed tense verbs

  • higher the interpersonal and affective deficit, the lower the pleasantness and intensity of emotional language used
• Strengths

  • Rich detailed qualitative data and evaluated quantitatively
  • Volunteered so ethical
  • Validity increased as the participants didn't know the aim and the interviewers didn't know who was a psychopath
  • Semi structured interview which allows them to give more detailed
  • using a computer allows for objective analysis
  • High inter rater reliability
• Weakness

  • Reliability lowered through use of semi structured interview
  • Used score of 25 rather than 30 so confounding results
  • Sample lacking in generalisability - all from Canada and committed murder