Hancock Flashcards
What is the Psychopathy Checklist revised?
20 item inventory of perceived personality traits and recorded behaviours. Usually completed as a semi structured interview as well as a review of collateral information such as official records
What was the aim of the study?
To examine the language characteristics of psychopaths
What were the three major language characteristics studied?
Whether psychopaths used more subordinating conjunctions e.g because and since - assosiated with cause and effect- suggest a planned crime
If narratives contained more reference to basic needs rather than higher ones
If they produce fewer and less emotional words, produce more disfluencies and use language that reflects emotional distancing from a lack of personal responsibility e.g. more past tense verbs
Describe the sample used in the study
Volunteer sample
52 male murderers from Canada who had admitted to their crime
14 psychopaths and 38 non psychopaths
How were the groups matched?
Type of murder and age
How were participants judged as psychopaths?
Psychopathy chechlist
Conducted by trained prison psychologists
30 is usual cut off but this was lowered to 25 to ensure they had enough participants
Describe the procedure
Participants were interviewed and asked to describe their homicide in as much detail as possible
Each interview lasted 25 minutes
Conducted by 2 senior psychology graduates and one research assistant
They were all blind to psychopathy scores
Narratives were then transcribed
What two analysis tools were used?
Wmatrix - compares speech, tags parts of speech also makes use of context
Dictionary of affect in language - analyses emotional properties of language also scores pleasantness and intensity of language for each statement
What were the findings of the study?
No significant different in words per account between the two groups.
Psychopaths average words - 2201.5 Non-psychopaths average words - 2554.3
What were the three characteristics of language hancock wanted to analyse?
Instrumental language analysis
Heirarchy of needs analysis
Emotional exprression in language
What was found about the language of psychopaths?
Psychopaths use 33% more disfluencies and more verbs in the past tense
More subordinating conjuctions suggest a more casual view
Showed more basic needs
Used more disfluencies and past tense verbs
What conclusions were drawn from the study?
Findings are consistent with predictions that psychopaths describe powerful emotional events in an idiosyncratic manner
What are some issues of reliability within the study?
All participants completed the same checklist
Standardised - evaluated by prison psychologists
Semi structured - less interpretation
