Hancock

• What is the background?

  • Psychopaths come across as -> charming and intelligent
  • Psychopaths lack = empathy and seeing others as people -> are extremely self-centred and manipulative

  How psychopathy is assessed = Specialist complete Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist (revised) aka PCL-R

  
  

  • PCLR -> Contains 20 items -> each item scored from 0-2 ( 0 = doesn't apply, 1 = applies somewhat, 2 = applies fully).
  • Score of 30 or above = someone is classed as psychopathic
• What is the aim?

  Investigate whether psychopaths use language in ways that are different from non-psychopaths (that it may be possible to detect psychopathy from how a person speaks)
• Who were the sample + how were they recruited?

  -Volunteered (self-selecting)

  
  

  
  

  52 males in prison in Canada for murder:

  
  

  -14 = classed as psychopath (Score of 25 = accepted as adequate for someone to be classed as psychopathic -> in line with standard procedure in research)

  
  

  -38 = classed as non-psychopathic
• What was the procedure?

  -Participants interviewed individually & asked to describe what happened during the murder that led to them being committed. Interviews all followed the 'Step-Wise' approach.

  
  

  -Interviews were typed up as transcripts -> everything prisoners said was typed up (even dysfluencies such as 'um' and 'ah' and ungrammatical uses of language).

  
  

  Transcripts went through two forms of computer-based analytics :

  
  

  1. Wmatrix -> program that analysed the whole 'corpus' of all 14 psychopaths transcripts and compared them against the whole 'corpus' of the 38 non-psychopath transcripts .

  Analysed the words used, tenses etc.

  
  

  1. DAL (Dictionary of Affect in Language) -> Applied to each transcript individually -> assesses the pleasantness and intensity of emotional language used.
• What are the findings? (3/6) 1x

  Found a number of differences in language used between the psychopaths and non-psychopaths when describing the murder they'd committed.

  
  

  -Instrument language - psychopaths - more subordinating conjunctions (as, because, since, so etc)

  
  

  -Hierarchy of Needs - Psychopaths used more words associated with satisfying low-level and physiological needs (e.g. food, shelter or sex). Non-psychopaths used more words relating to higher-level emotional or spiritual needs 9e.g. family or religion
• How can the study be seen as coming from the psychodynamic perspective?

  -References to perspective concepts in research papers -> suggests the differences in how psychopaths use language as 'likely beyond conscience control' -> suggests the unconscious mind influences

  
  

  -Suggests because of how prison restricts ability of psychopaths to fulfil many of their 'basic and thrill-seeking drives' that they use less emotionally pleasant language.

  
  

  -Language used reflect increase in psychological distancing e.g. increased rates of past tense = can be seen as ego defence mechanism.
• How can the study be seen as the key theme of 'measuring distance'?

  Hancock suggests it possible to carry out a quantitative analysis of how people use language + how psychopaths use it in measurable distinctive ways
• How does the study link to individual differences?

  Investigates a way that could possible measure differences between people in the study -> use of their language
• What study does Hancock's link to?

  Yerke/Gould
• What are two similarities between Hancock and Yerke/Gould?

  They're both Quasi Experiments

  
  

  -Yerke/Gould = Differing ethnicities in sample etc military recruits

  -Hancock et al = Whether participants were psychopaths or non-psychopaths

  
  

  Looked at psychological constructs

  
  

  -Yerkes/Gould = Measured intelligences of recruits

  -Hancock = Measured participants psychopathy
• What are two differences between Yerke/Gould and Hancock?

  Sampling methods

  
  

  -Yerkes/Gould = Opportunity -> recruits happened to be there (in the military)

  -Hancock = Self-selecting -> Participants volunteered to be a part of the study

  
  

  Sample size

  
  

  -Yerke/Gould = 1.75 million participants (+ issues in external reliability)

  -52 participants -> 14 psychopaths, 38 non-psychopaths
• How has the study changes our understanding of the theme 'measuring differences'?

  -Instead of getting respondent to complete test etc on themselves -> could have professionals analyse what people do instead

  
  

  -Suggests there can be a role for technology etc DAL in the process
• How has the study not changed our understanding of the theme 'measuring differences'?

  -Only draw out participants language use (computer) -> are they really measuring something thats psychopathy

  
  

  -Only testing male participants -> limited in what it tells use
• How has the study changed our understanding of individual diversity?

  -Draws attention to psychopathy and how it can be revealed by language used
• How has the study changed our understanding of social diversity?

  -Studying soldiers rather than prisoners(?)
• How has the study not changed our understanding of social diversity?

  -Neither study has investigated social factors such as gender -> both focus on males participants -> study doesn't add to our understanding of social diversity
• How has the study not changed our understanding of cultural diversity?

  -Both took place in western culture -> doesn't show much in the way of cultural differences