Hancock

• The key theme is measuring differences.
• Background

  A psychopath is an individual who exhibits abnormally high levels of selfishness and has little or no conscience. They make up approximately 1 % of the population.
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

  Maslow's (1943) theory identified 5 types of motivations/ needs that humans thrive off. These must be progressed through in a fixed order.

  Psychopaths appear to focus on what Maslow referred to as basic physiological needs such as food, sex and shelter.

  Higher level needs such as meaningful relationships, spirituality and self-esteem tend to be of little interest to psychopaths.
• Background

  Language directly communicates an individual's thoughts to another person.

  Subtle patterns in word choice can reveal significant insight about psychological functioning.
• Background

  Quantitative word counts and qualitative language analysis can be used as a tool in the identification and examination of abnormal psychological processes.
• Background

  Psychopathy may be reflected in idiosyncratic (distinctive) linguistic styles.

  However, there has been conflicting opinion as some suggest that psychopaths are skilled conversationalists, whilst others argue that they are less cohesive than non-psychopaths.
• Background

  Previous studies suggest that the language of psychopaths appears to be less cohesive due to subtle differences:

  • The discourse (meaning and purpose) is more likely to include a tangential and incoherent quality. Psychopaths often change their train of thought, confusing their audience.
  • Psychopaths use more contradictory, logically inconsistent statements.
  • The narratives of psychopaths contained fewer cohesive ties (words which link together) relative to the amount of speech. They also provide more details than non-psychopaths.
• The study

  Hancock was the first to uniquely examine the specific qualities of psychopathic language using sophisticated statistical text analysis tools.
• The study

  The researchers examined the language characteristics of psychopaths on three major characteristics:

  • Their instrumental nature
  • Their Unique material and socioemotional needs
  • Their emotional deficit
• The study

  Their instrumental nature- premeditated and motivated by an external goal.

  As psychopaths appear to view the world and others instrumentally, as theirs for the taking, Hancock was interested in testing if psychopath's instrumental orientation would be reflected in their speech and justification for their actions.
• The study

  Their unique material and socioemotional needs- basic physiological and material needs.

  Hancock was interested in whether psychopath's narratives about their crimes contained more semantic references to physiological and material needs such as food, drink, clothing, sex and resources like money, and fewer semantic references to higher level needs such as love, family and spirituality.
• The study

  Their emotional deficit- have they got an ability to express themselves and appreciate the emotions of others?

  Hancock theorised that an emotional deficit might lead psychopaths to:

  • Produce fewer and less intense emotional words.
  • Produce more disfluencies (e.g. uh, um) which increase when an individual is faced with multiple cognitive choices.
  • Use language that reflects increased psychological distancing from, and a lack of personal responsibility for their crimes. This could be evidenced via the increased use of past tense.
• Aim

  To examine whether the language of psychopaths and non-psychopaths differ when describing murder narratives.
• Aim

  Psychopathic speech was analysed to see whether it reflected, as predicted, an instrumental/ predatory world view, unique socioemotional needs and a lack of emotion.
• Sample

  • 52 male murderers
  • 14 psychopathic
  • 38 non-psychopathic (controls)
• Sample

  • All participants were in prison in Canada.
  • They had all admitted their crime and volunteered for the study.
• Sample

  • Mean age at the time of their imprisonment was 28.9 years.
  • Participants were matched on key characteristics such as age and length since the murder was committed.
• Research Method

  A self-report method was used.

  The study used semi-structures/ open-ended interviews in the form of the Step-Wise Interview.
• Research Method

  Overall, a quasi experiment was used.

  Naturally occurring IV: If the participant was a psychopath or not.

  DV: Language differences describing murder narrative.
• Research Method

  The Step-Wise Interview was initially devised to interview child witnesses. The procedure is as follows:

  • The interviewer builds rapport with the interviewee, asking questions about their interests.
  • The interviewer introduces the topic of concern with a general question (to encourage unprompted, free narrative account of the event).
  • After the interviewee has exhausted their free narrative, the interviewer moves on to questioning.
  • This begins with open ended questions, and then if necessary specific but non-leading and closed questions.
• Procedure

  • Potential participants were asked whether they would be interested in taking part in a research study.
• Procedure

  • Before the interview, individuals underwent a psychopathy assessment using the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R).
  • This is categorised by 20 criteria from 0-2, with a maximum score of 40.
  • The clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopathy is scores of 30 or above.
  • The study used a cut-off of 25.
• Procedure

  • The Psychopathy Checklist- Revised assessment was either conducted by extensively trained prison psychologists, or a researcher who was well trained in the coding of the PCL-R.
  • An inter rater reliability check showed a significant positive correlation with p< 0.001 (smaller than or equal to).
• Procedure

  • After the PCL-R, participants were interviewed using the Step-Wise method.
  • At the beginning of the interview, the purpose of the study (to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their homicide offence) and the procedure were verbally explained to the prisoner.
• Procedure

  • The prisoners were audio-taped whilst describing their homicide offences in as much detail as possible.
• Procedure

  • The interviewers were 2 senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant, all of whom were blind to the psychopathy scores of the offenders.
• Procedure

  • Interviews lasted about 25 minutes.
• Procedure

  • After the interviews, the narratives were transcribed and then checked to ensure spelling errors were corrected.
  • All interviewer comments were deleted, and proper nouns and abbreviations were spelled out (for the purpose of analysis).
• Procedure

  The 2 text analysis tools which were used to analyse the transcripts were:

  • Wmatrix
  • Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL)
• Procedure

  The language analysis programme Wmatrix is a programme that compares parts of speech with semantic concepts contained in the psychopath and control group transcripts. It compared word usage between the two groups to see if there were any significant differences.
• Procedure

  The software programme Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) is a dictionary-based analysis tool that provides individual words with emotional ratings. Many words that do not describe emotions (eg dark, bright, fast, slow) are capable of communicating a clear emotive tone.

  This analysis assesses the emotional properties of language based on whether the word is positive/ negative, low/ high intensity and low/high imagery.

  A score for pleasantness and intensity of emotional language is produced for each participant's statement.
• Results

  No significant differences were found in the average number of words used between the two groups.
• Results for Instrumental Language Analysis

  Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions than controls (e.g. because, since, as, so that) suggesting that psychopaths were more likely to describe cause and effect relationships (justifications) when describing their murder.
• Results for Instrumental Language Analysis

  "I said I have to do something because there is no way I want to end up losing all my life in prison."
• Results for Hierarchy of Needs Analysis

  Psychopaths used approximately twice as many words relating to basic physiological needs, including eating, drinking and monetary resources when describing their murders than controls.

  This supports the view that psychopaths focus more on physiological needs than higher level needs.
• Results for Hierarchy of Needs Analysis

  "The money was excellent."
• Results for Hierarchy of Needs Analysis

  In contrast, controls used significantly more language related to social needs, including family, religion and spirituality than psychopaths.
• Results for Emotional Expression in Language

  Psychopaths used more past tense verbs than controls.
• Results for Emotional Expression in Language

  Psychopaths used fewer present tense verbs than controls.
• Results for Emotional Expression in Language

  Psychopaths produced a higher rate of articles overall than controls, revealing that their language involved more concrete nouns.

  (Articles= a word that is used before a noun to show whether the noun refers to something specific or not, eg a, an, the).