Hancock Flashcards
Hungry like the wolf:
a word-pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths
characteristics of a psychopath
-behaviour conflicts social norms
-violating/disregarding rights of others
-inability to distinguish right and wrong
-difficulty showing remorse/empathy
-manipulating and hurting others
-tendency to lie often
-recurring problems with the law
-lack of guilt
-unusual childhood behaviour
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Identified basic types of motivation and the order they must be met
-we experience more than one need at a time
-Maslow suggests a certain need may dominate in various instances
-psychopaths appear to focus on basic needs (food,sex,shelter)
-while higher level needs like spirituality, self esteem and respect seem to attract little interest.
PCL-R (psychopathy checklist-revised)
A psychological assessment tool most commonly used to assess the presence of psychopathy in individuals.
It measures characteristic traits of psychopaths such as superficial charm, pathological lying, manipulation of others, impulsivity, juvenile delinquency and criminality.
Each item is scored on a 0-2 scale,(0=no match, 2=reasonably good match)
Score above 30 indicates psychopathy.
Are all murderers psychopaths?
No-
it is important to see the distinction between different categories of murder.
For example, crimes of passion are rarely associated with psychopaths due to the crime being spontaneous and unplanned.
Are all psychopaths murderers?
No-
characteristics of psychopaths often lend themselves to top level positions in business statistics suggest 1% of population are psychopaths and it is unlikely the whole prison population is made up of psychopaths. (approx 30%)
Summary & background
Hancock investigated language used by psychopaths, interviewed psychopaths and non psychopaths, asked all to describe their murder in as much detail as possible. Interviews were then analysed by 2 computerised content analysis programmes. Several differences found between non psychopaths and psychopaths; amount of cause and effect phrases, such as because used (significantly more by psychopaths) words relating to basic needs (significantly more by psychopaths) number of disfluencies used (significantly more by psychopaths) Psychopaths also included less social needs such as family in their speeches.
Psychopathy
estimated 1% of population are psychopaths.
Psychopaths have specific combinations of cognitive, social & emotional characteristics that differentiate them from general population. Exhibit abnormally high levels of selfishness and have profound emotional deficit; however in spite of appearing to have little or no conscience they exhibit no apparent deficits in intellect.
Psychopathy has a biological basis to it
evidence from neuroimaging research suggested structural and functional abnormalities of the brain including; reduced grey matter in frontal & temporal lobes, anomalies in prefrontal cortex, corpus callosum and hippocampus.
The whole concept of psychopathy is hugely controversial, suggests some ppl may not be fully responsible for their crimes, also efforts of rehab may not work on them. Also controversial is the claim that many business leaders may be psychopaths.
Suggestion from this study by Hancock
It may be possible to identify psychopaths from way they speak, as psychopaths are skilled at manipulating, deceiving and controlling their self presentation, a computerised tool examining subtle aspects of their language represents a new way to gain insight into their behaviour.
Language
Language communicates directly an individuals thoughts on another person, the relationship between language and thought has been subject of much debate among philosophers and psychologists.
benefits of words in this study
-Its thought that words can reveal significant insights about psychological functioning, underlying cognitive and emotional processes can be revealed through subtle patterns in word choice.
-Quantitative word counts can be used as a tool in identifying and examining abnormal psychological processes
( psychopathy may therefore be reflected in idiosyncratic linguistic styles )
Aims/Hypotheses
This study was the first to uniquely examine specific qualities of psychopathic language using sophisticated statistical text analysis tools. Researchers examined language characteristics of psychopaths (describing their violent crimes) on 3 major characteristics: 1- their instrumental nature, 2- their unique material and socio-emotional needs, 3- their emotional deficits
Researchers examined language characteristics of psychopaths (describing their violent crimes) on 3 major characteristics (Their instrumental nature)
Psychopaths appear to view world and others as theirs for the taking, Hancock was interested in seeing if their speech reflected this in the form of more subordinate conjunctions used; because, since, as, so, that etc…
These words are associated with cause and effect statements and would suggest offenders whose crimes are premediated and motivated by the achieving of an external goal.
Researchers examined language characteristics of psychopaths (describing their violent crimes) on 3 major characteristics (Their unique material and socio-emotional needs)
Satisfying their basic physiological and material needs (food,sex, shelter) matters more to psychopaths than higher level needs for meaningful relationships, spirituality, self esteem etc. Hancock was interested in seeing whether their narratives about their crimes contain more semantic references to food,drink,sex,clothing,rescources(money) and fewer semantic references reflecting higher level needs like love,family,spirituality.
Researchers examined language characteristics of psychopaths (describing their violent crimes) on 3 major characteristics (Their emotional deficit)
Hancock hypothesised that this emotional deficit would lead psychopaths to;
- produce fewer & less intense emotional words
-produce more disfluencies (um, uh)
-use more language that reflects increased psychological ‘distancing’ , lack of personal responsibility for their crimes, e.g higher rate of past tense, less present tense.
AIM
To test how crime narratives differ between psychopaths and non-psychopathic murderers.
-Psychopathic speech was analysed for indications of an instrumental or predatory world view, unique socio-emotional needs, and a poverty of affect.
Participants
52 male murderers (first degree, second degree, manslaughter)
All from Canada, volunteer sample, admitted their crime & took part in study.
Psychopathy measured using PCL-R; 14 ps psychopaths, 38 non psychopaths
-Groups were matched on murder type and overall mean age at time of their current homicide. (28.9 years old) Similar mean amount of time had elapsed since their crime across 2 groups.
Mean amount of time elapsed since their crime
-psychopaths 11.87 years
-non psychopaths 9.82 years
Method and design
Semi-structured interviews/ open ended interviews (self report method)
-which employed the ‘step-wise’ interview technique to gather data in relation to language of psychopaths and non-psychopaths who had committed murder.
-Narratives were transcribed and analysed through content analysis using the Wmatrix and the DAL.
Procedure
1) potential ps asked if interested in taking part in research study
2) interested individuals underwent psychopathy assessment measured using PCL-R, characterised by 20 criteria scored from 0-2 (max score of 40)
(PCL-R measures affective traits to give individual scores.)
3) Assessments either conducted by extensively trained prison psychologists or a researcher well trained in coding of the PCL-R
4) ps were interviewed, at beginning purpose of study and the procedure were verbally explained.
5) while being audio taped ps were asked to describe their offences in as much detail as possible.
6) in this open ended interviewing procedure each ps was encouraged to provide as much info of crime as possible.
7) ps were prompted to provide to do this using standardised procedure known as step wise interview
(interviews lasted about 25 mins.)
8) narratives were transcribed and checked to ensure spelling errors corrected, interviewer comments deleted, proper nouns & abbreviations were spelled out.
Clinical diagnostic cut off for psychopathy
Scores of 30 or above
high level of inter-rater reliability check
Showed significant positive correlation with p< .001 done by having trained graduate student re code 10 randomly selected case files.
cut off score in this study
25 (previously justified for research purposes)
Purpose of study
to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their homicide offence.
Step wise interview
prompted ps to provide as much info of crime as possible from start to end omitting no details, step wise interview facilitates open ended questions.
Interviewers
2 senior psychology grad students and one research assistant, all were blind to psychopathy scores of offenders.
(3 researchers may ask diff questions-hard to compare what ps said)
2 text analysis tools used to analyse transcripts
1- The corpus analysis programme Wmatrix
2- The dictionary of affect in language (DAL)
corpus analysis programme:Wmatrix
used to compare parts of speech and analyse semantic concepts contained in psychopath and control corpora.
subordinate conjunctions & disfluencies, turn qualitative into quantitative.
Dictionary of affect in language: DAL
software programme (Whissell & Dewson,1986) used to examine affective tone of words- analysed emotional properties of language such as positivity, intensity and imagery.
(emotional properties of language)
Results of word count between psychopaths and non psychopaths
Interviews of psychopaths produced total of 127,376 words. 14 psychopath narratives contained 26,563 words, averaged 2,201.5 per participant.
38 control narratives contained 97,824 words averaged 2,554.3 per participant.
(there was no significant difference in average number of words produced by psychopaths and control)
result- hypothesis/aim 1; instrumental language analysis
psychopaths produced MORE subordinating conjunctions than non psychos. e.g because, so, since,as etc…
result- hypothesis/aim 2; hierarchy of needs analysis
psychopaths used approx 2x as many words related to basic physiological needs like food and sex when describing murders.
non psychos used significantly more language related to social needs like family and religion than psychopaths.
Semantic content of homicide descriptions, related to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs across psychopathic and non psychopathic offenders.
result- hypothesis/aim 3; emotional expression of language
The degree to which psychopaths had physiologically distanced themselves/ were simply detached from their crime was examined through use of past tense and present form of verbs and rate of articles.
Psychos used more past tense verbs than non psychos. e.g ‘stabbed’, used fewer present tense e.g ‘stab’. Psychos produced higher rate of articles than controls revealing their language involved more concrete nouns, this data suggests psychos viewed their crime as more in the past, more psychologically distant than non psychos did.
psychopathic language-results
psychopathic language was significantly less fluent than controls with 33% more disfluencies e.g ‘umm’ ‘uh’
emotional content of language-results
initially no significant difference in emotional content of language between 2 groups in terms of pleasantness, intensity or imagery were found. However, further analysis showed psychopathy to be associated with less positively and less emotionally intense language.
Conclusions
Hancock concluded; psychopaths describe powerful emotional events in a rational but primitive way compared to others.
Their analysis suggests that compared to non psychopaths, psychopaths:
-are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan than non psychopaths
-they focus more on their own basic physiological needs than higher level needs than non psychos
-they give less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes, use less emotionally pleasant language than non psychos
-they will linguistically frame their homicide as more in past and in more psychologically distant terms than non psychos
-psychopathic language is substantially more disfluent than non psychos.
