Hancock Flashcards
key theme + area
key theme =
area = individual differences
what is a psychopath
neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.
are all murders psychopaths
No. It is important to see the distinction between the different categories of murder. For example, crimes of passion are rarely associated with psychopaths due to the crime being spontaneous and unplanned.
are all murders psychopaths
No. The characteristics of psychopaths often lend themselves to top level positions in business. Statistics suggest that 1% of the population are psychopaths and it is unlikely that the whole prison population is made up of psychopaths.
characteristics of a psyhopath
- Reduced capacity for moral responsibility
- Act selfishly
- Brain-imaging = biological explanation for behaviour (Raine, 2004)
- 1% of population are deemed as Psychopaths
- Success as Business person/politician/cult leader
- NO intellectual deficits
psychopathy checklist - revised (PCL-R)
- Clinical diagnostic tool- Used to assess ppts against 20 criteria
- 2 Main factors assessed- Interpersonal and affective traits and anti-social lifestyle
- Score 30 or above (out of 40) = psychopathic diagnosis
- trits assessed in a PCL-R
- Grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self
- Lack of remorse or guilt
- Shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)
- manipulative
- parasitic lifestyle
- poor behavioral controls
- sexual promiscuity
- early behavioural problems
- lack of empathy
- impulsivity
- irresponsability
- Lack of realistic long-term goals
- criminal versitility
- short term relationships
- juvenile delinquency
- Revocation of conditional release
background to psychopathy
- Psychopathy – 1% of population
- Hare – Psychopathy checklist
- Raine – Brain abnormalities identified through PET scans
- Fallon – possible biological causes
background to psychopathy + language
- Williamson (1993) analysed the narratives of psychopaths and non-psychopaths and found that psychopathic language may be less cohesive and more incoherent.
- Porter et al. (2009) – psychopathic offenders x2.5 more likely than non-psychopaths to have successful parole applications, despite being far more likely to reoffend.
- Cleckley (1976) observed, through case studies, that the discourse of psychopaths was more likely to include a tangential and incoherent quality than non-psychopaths.
aim
- examine the specific qualities of psychopathic language using sophisticated statistical text analysis tools.
- The researchers examined the language characteristics of psychopaths (in describing their violent crimes) on three major characteristics:
(i) Their instrumental nature.
(ii) Their unique material and socioemotional needs.
(iii)Their emotional deficit
instrumental language
- Psychopaths see opportunity to take things so may use more subordinate conjunctions compared to Non-Psychopaths
- Subordinate conjunctions show cause and effect and evidence of premeditation (planned their crimes)
Maslow’s hierachy of needs
- self-actualisation
2. esteem needs
3. belonginness + love needs
4. safety needs
5. physiological needs
emotional deficit
Psychopaths have emotional deficits- personally and recognising others emotions - may therefore :
- Use less emotional words
- More disfluency in speech eg. ‘um’ ‘ah’ as they don’t know how to describe events appropriately
- Distancing language as don’t feel responsible for their crimes e.g - past tense and dehumanising ‘the person’ ‘a person’
sample
- 52 male murderers (14 psychopathic, 38 non-psychopathic)
- Incarcerated in Canadian correctional facilities
- Had admitted their crime and volunteered for the study
- Similar mean age (28.9 yrs) in 2 groups & similar in the time since the homicide was committed (11.87 yrs and non-psychopaths, 9.82 yrs).
procedure
- Psychopathy was measured using Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003).
- Used semi-structured/open-ended interviews (a self-report method) employing the Step-Wise Interview technique
- Transcribed narratives & analysed; content analysis using the Wmatrix and the DAL (Dictionary of Affect in Language).
- Assessments carried out by trained prison psychologists and researchers experienced in coding the test.
–>Inter-rater reliability check was conducted on the PCL-R scores – trained graduate student
psychopathy measurement
39 prisoners were assessed by Psychologists, 13 prisoners assessed by researchers experienced in coding the test.
- Inter-rater reliability check was conducted on the PCL-R scores – trained graduate student re-coded 10 randomly selected case files.
- 25/40 for the purpose of this study was considered Psychopathic
Psychopathic sample Non-Psychopathic sample
14 38
step wise interview technique
- The steps in this method begin with the most open, least leading, least suggestive form of questioning and, if necessary, proceed to more specific and more leading questioning
- Used in interviewing victims of crimes (minimise trauma)
- Also used as a strategy for minimising the effects of leading questions / post event information
interviews
- Interviewers= 2x psychology graduates and 1x research assistant
- Blind to the psychopathy scores of ppts.
- 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.
- Prisoners were asked to describe the homicides in as much detail as possible
- Took 25 minutes
- Were taped
- Interviews transcribed
- Analysed using 2x text-analysis tools.
analysing interviews - Wmatrix
- W matrix = tool for corpus analysis and comparison
- Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in speech
- The speech produced by the psychopaths was compared to all the speech produced by the non-psychopathic killers:
> Instrumental language analysis i.e. because, since, as, so that.
> Hierarchy of needs analysis (relating to Maslow’s typology)
> Temporal representations – use of past , present and future tense in lexical verbs
analysing interviews - DAL
- An instrument designed to measure the emotional meaning of words and text
- Compares individual words to a word list of 8742 words that have been rated by people for their activation evaluation and imagery
Results - Instrumental language analysis
- Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions than controls e.g. because, since, as, so that.
- 1.82% of the language used by Psychopaths were instrumental vs 1.54% for non- Psychopaths
Results - Hierarchy of needs analysis
- Psychopaths used approximately twice as many words related to basic physiological needs, including eating, drinking and monetary resources
- Controls used significantly more language related to social needs, including family, religion and spirituality than psychopaths.
Results- Temporal representations of psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders.
- Psychopaths had 33% more disfluency in speech ‘um’ ‘ah’
- Psychopaths used more past tense verbs than controls e.g. stabbed.
- Psychopaths produced a higher rate of articles (a word that is used with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun- e.g. the ,an ,a) than controls, revealing that their language involved less names of something or someone
Results - Emotional deficits
- Initially, no significant differences in the emotional content of language between the two groups in terms of pleasantness, intensity or imagery were found.
- However further analysis showed psychopathy to be associated with less positive valence and less emotionally intense language
conclusions - psychopaths are …
- More likely than non-psychopaths to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder.
- More likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan than non-psychopaths.
- Focus more on physiological needs than higher level social needs than non-psychopaths.
- Are focused on a lower level of necessities in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than non-psychopaths.
- Will linguistically frame their homicide as more in the past and in more psychologically distant terms than non-psychopaths.
- Give less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes and use less emotionally pleasant language than non-psychopaths.
further conclusions
- Psychopathic language is substantially more disfluent than that of non-psychopaths.
- Psychopaths describe powerful emotional events (their crimes) in an idiosyncratic manner.
- Psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level.
