Hancock 2011

Question 1

What is the sample?

Answer 1

52 men in prison in Canada for murder

All admitted to the crime

Question 2

What was the research method?

Answer 2

Quasi

Question 3

What was the research design?

Answer 3

independent measures design

Question 4

What was the procedure?

Answer 4

1. Ps gave consent and completed the PCL-R to assess psychopathy.
2. The cut-off point for a clinical diagnosis for psychopathy is a score of 30 or above out of 40.
3. Ps were interviewed by 2 senior psychology graduates and one research student- all blind to psychopathy score.
4. Ps asked to describe their offence
5. Narratives were typed up in transcripts
6. They used 2 language tools to analyse the transcripts – these were the Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) which looks for emotion and tone in language, and the WMatrix, which looks at grammar, types of words, and splits words into different categories.

Question 5

What are 2 findings?

Answer 5

-Psychopaths produced more
subordinating conjunctions than non psychopaths.
-Psychopaths used 33% more
disfluencies and more past tense verbs than non-psychopaths.

Question 6

What is 1 conclusion?

Answer 6

Psychopaths are more likely to describe the cause and effect of the murder they committed (see it as logical)

Question 7

How does it relate to the key theme ‘measuring difference’?

Answer 7

Suggests that it is possible to carry out a quantitative analysis of how people use language in measurably distinctive ways

Question 8

How does it relate to the individual differences area?

Answer 8

Investigates a way in which it might be possible to measure differences between people- in this study, through language

Question 9

How is Hancock similar to Gould?

Answer 9

• Both conducted on all male ps

- Both carried out in ‘institutes’ G/Y=army camp, H=prison

Question 10

How is Hancock different to Gould?

Answer 10

-Sample size very different, G/Y=1.75 mill, H=52

-generalisability, G/Y= different culture backgrounds
H=specific (murderers)