hancock

• hungry like a wolf - a word pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths
• psychopathy - a personality disorder characterised by a number of traits

  • factor 1: personality "aggressive narcissism" - pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt
  • factor 2: case history "socially deviant lifestyle" - poor behavioural control, impulsivity, irresponsibility
  • traits not correlated with either factors - sexual promiscuity, many short-term marital relationships
• Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of needs - human beings are motivated by needs to self actualise

  1. physiological needs - biological requirements for human survival e.g. air, food and drink
  2. safety needs - experience order, predictability and control in their lives -> fulfilled by family and security, emotional security, law and order
  3. love and belongings - emotional need for interpersonal relationships
  4. esteem needs
  5. self actualisation needs
• Raine et al (2003, 2004) found that psychopaths appear to have a biological basis
• Patrick (2006) found psychopaths show no apparent deficits in intellect
• Cleckley (1976) observed that the language of psychopaths was more likely to be illogical , contradictory and inconsistent compared to non-psychopaths
• aim

  test how crime narratives differ between psychopaths and non-psychopathic murderers.

  psychopathic speech was analysed on three major characteristics

  • their instrumental nature (using people and situations to get what they want)
  • their unique material and socio-economic needs
  • their emotional deficit (lack of empathy or general lack of emotion about their crime)
• sample

  52 male murderers - 14 psychopathic and 38 non-psychopathic

  imprisoned in Canadian correctional facilities

  all ppts admitted their crime and volunteered for the study

  did not differ in age, overall mean age at the time of their current homicide was 28.9 years (range 15-40yrs)

  similar mean amount of time since their crime - psychopaths mean time 11.87, non-psychopaths 9.82 years
• procedure - selection of ppts

  potential ppts asked whether they would be interested in taking part in a research study

  interested individuals were assessed using Hare's Psychology Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)

  the pcl-r assessments were conducted extensively by trained prison psychologists or a researcher well trained in the coding of pcl-r

  cut off score of 25 to be classed as a psychopath
• experiment design

  quasi experiment

  self-report using semi-structured interviews
• procedure - data collection

  ppts were interviewed

  purpose of the study (to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their homicide offence) and procedure was verbally explained

  ppts asked to describe their homicide offence in as much detail as possible whilst being audio-taped

  interviewers were 2 senior psychology graduate students and 1 research assistant, all blind to the psychopathy of the offenders

  interviews lasted about 25 minutes
• step wise interview technique - used in forensic investigation which attempts to increase the reliability of memory for past events and the validity of intentions for future behaviour, starts off unprompted and later in the interview allows scope for specific questions
• procedure - data analysis

  audiotapes were transcribed as close to the original as possible, all interviewer comments were deleted and proper nouns and abbreviations were spelled out
• W matrix

  used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic concepts contained in the psychopath and the non-psychopath's narratives - compared the psychopath sample to the non-psychopathic sample, showing any similarities and differences in speech types (use of nouns, adjectives) and the content (emotional states, timings)
• Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL)

  used to examine the emotional properties of language such as positivity, intensity and imagery
• results

  both psychopaths and control group produced a total of 127,376 words and there was no significant difference in the average number of words between the groups
• results - their instrumental nature

  psychopaths view the world and others instrumentally and this was reflected in their language which shows they are motivated to achieve an external goal

  • use subordinating conjunctions more like 'because', 'since', 'so that' associated with cause and effect statements
• results - their unique material and socio-emotional needs

  satisfying their basic physiological and material needs matters more to psychopaths than satisfying higher level needs

  • non-psychopaths used significantly more words connected to family and religion
• results - emotional deficit

  struggle to describe their crimes in a manner that seems appropriate to others due to the lack of empathy for victims emotions and lack of emotions themselves.

  psychopaths viewed their crime as more in the past and more psychologically distant than the non-psychopaths
• conclusion

  psychopaths:

  • more likely to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder
  • view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan
  • focus more on physiological needs than higher level social needs
  • linguistically frame their homicide as more in the past and more psychologically distant
  • less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes and use less emotionally pleasant language
• research method - strength

  gather large amounts of detail and in-depth data about individuals compared to questionnaires
• research method - weakness

  time intensive to gather data compared to questionnaires -> fewer participants
• sample - strength

  relatively large number of prisoners interviewed

  produced huge amounts of data for statistical analysis which improves the representativeness of the research
• sample - weakness

  unrepresentative as all ppts were Canadian prisoners - ethnocentric

  all ppts were male making it difficult to generalise to a female population - androcentric

  introduced bias possibly as the sample is unlikely to represent murderers in prison who chose not to participate
• qualitative data - strength

  large amount of qualitative data was produced from individual interview recordings - captured the richness of language used to describe each homicide -> allows researchers to study the difference between psychopaths and non-psychopaths in great depth
• qualitative data - weakness

  audio-taped narratives in raw form were too detailed and varied to allow direct comparison
• quantitative data - strength

  overall view of differences in language between two groups
• ethics - strength

  confidentiality maintained

  informed consent was gained through volunteer sampling - consideration of circumstances of ppts' imprisonment and how it may affect their abilities to freely consent to contribute to the study

  full verbal brief at the outset of each interview
• reliability - strength

  interview procedure can be replicated

  random checks by another researcher confirmed a higher level of inter-rater reliability
• validity - strength

  good ecological validity - ppts were interviewed about their own real-life crimes -> provided detailed and in-depth accounts

  interviewing technique was designed specifically to avoid asking leading questions and to allow ppts to speak freely

  highly valid measures to determine psychopathy (PCL-R) and linguistic analysis tools (Wmatrix and DAL) - tested for validity and provides concurrent validity -> used extensively in other research
• validity - weakness

  some ppts were interviewed more than a decade after their crimes

  social desirability bias may reduce validity of the responses as ppts might have wanted to appear remorseful
• practical applications

  understanding the language of psychopaths reveals personality and behavioural traits that set them apart from the general population

  potential to help identify psychopaths and deal with them effectively - psychopaths reveal an emotional distance from their crimes and motivations linked to basic needs

  key differences can be considered by those working in criminal justice system -> appropriate ways to rehabilitate psychopathic criminals