hancock (2011) language of psychopaths

Question 1

research method

Answer 1

Psychopathy was measured using Pschopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003).
• This study used semi-structured/open-ended interviews (a self-report method) which employed the Step-Wise Interview technique to gather
data in relation to the language of psychopaths and non-psychopaths who had committed murder.
• The narratives were subsequently transcribed and analysed through content analysis using the Wmatrix and the DAL

Question 2

sample

Answer 2

52 male murders (14 psychopathic, 38 non-psychopathic) incarcerated in Canadian correctional facilities who admitted their crime and volunteered
for the study.
• 8 convictions (16%) were for first-degree murder, 32 (64%) of convictions were for second-degree murder and 10 (20%) of convictions were for
manslaughter.
• There were no differences between the type of crime (manslaughter, second-degree murder, first-degree murder) and psychopathy versus control
(non-psychopathy).
• Mean age at the time of their current homicide was 28.9 years (SD = 9.2, range of 14-50 years).
• The two groups did not differ on age (psychopaths: M = 39.71 years, SD = 7.53; controls: M = 39.91 years, SD = 9.76, t(50) = .06, ns.
• The two groups did not differ in the amount of time since the homicide was committed (psychopaths: M = 11.87 years, SD = 7.78; controls: M =
9.82, SD = 6.78, t(50) = .93, ns.

Question 3

outline- procedure

Answer 3

Firstly, potential participants were asked whether they would be interested in taking part in a research study.
• Interested individuals underwent a psychopathy assessment:
- Psychopathy was measured using the Psychology Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Psychopathy, as measured by the PCL-R is characterised by
20 criteria scored from 0 – 2 for a maximum score of 40. The clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopathy is scores of 30 or above. (Further
details of this can be found in the original study.)
- The PCL–R assessments were 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 ≤ .001).
- Using a cut-off score of 25 (which had previously been justified for research purposes e.g. Jackson, Rogers, Neumann & Lambert, 2002), 14
offenders were classified as psychopathic and 38 as non-psychopathic.
• Participants were then interviewed. 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.
• While being audio-taped, participants were asked to describe their homicide offences in as much detail as possible. In this open-ended
interviewing procedure, each participant was encouraged to provide as much information about the crime as possible from the beginning
to the end, omitting no details. Participants were prompted to provide to do this using a standardised procedure known as the Step-Wise
Interview (see Yuille, Marxson & Cooper, 1999).
• The interviewers were two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant, all of whom were blind to the psychopathy scores
of the offenders.
• Interviews lasted about 25 minutes.
• The narratives were subsequently transcribed, as close to verbatim as possible and then checked to ensure spelling errors were corrected, all
interviewer comments were deleted and proper nouns and abbreviations were spelled out.
• Two text analysis tools were then used to analyse the transcripts:
(i) The corpus analysis programme Wmatrix (Rayson, 2003, 2008), which was used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic
concepts contained in the psychopath and control corpora.
(ii) The Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) software programme (Whissell & Dewson, 1986) was used to examine the affective tone of the
words.
(Details of these text analysis tools can be found in the original study.)

Question 4

conclusions

Answer 4

Psychopaths are more likely than non-psychopaths to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder.
• Psychopaths are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan than non-psychopaths.
• Psychopaths focus more on physiological needs than higher level social needs than non-psychopaths.
• Psychopaths are focused on a lower level of necessities in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than non-psychopaths.
• Psychopaths will linguistically frame their homicide as more in the past and in more psychologically distant terms than non-psychopaths.
• Psychopaths give less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes and use less emotionally pleasant language than non-psychopaths.
• 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