Hancock et al (2011)

Question 1

Background of the study

Answer 1

-Psychopathy is a personality disorder that cause a person to come across as charming, but they lack empathy and are extremely self-centred
-The way of assessing psychopathy is the PCL-R test, containing 20 items. Those that score 30/40 are deemed psychopathic

Question 2

Aim of the study

Answer 2

-To investigate whether psychopaths use language in ways that are different to how non-psychopaths use language
-So that it might be possible to detect psychopathy from how a person speaks

Question 3

Sample

Answer 3

-Self-selecting
-52 males in a Canadian prison for murder
-14 classed as psychopathic, 38 classes as non-psychopathic
-Had pled guilty to their crimes

Question 4

What type of experiment was it?

Answer 4

-Quasi
-The IV was naturally occurring-whether or not someone was a psychopath

Question 5

Procedure (interview section)

Answer 5

-PCL-R done on participants, but they did not know their results
-Neither did researchers interviewing them-double blind
-Interviewed individually and asked to describe what happened when they committed the murder using the ‘Step-Wise approach’

Question 6

Procedure (analysis section)

Answer 6

-Interviews typed up as highly detailed transcripts, including any disfluencies
-Subjected to two types of compute analysis-Wmatrix and DAL

Question 7

What was Wmatrix?

Answer 7

-A program that analysed and compared the entire group of transcripts from psychopaths and non-psychopaths
-Analysed the words used as well as the tense it was in

Question 8

What was DAL?

Answer 8

-Dictionary of affect in language
-Applied to each transcript individually
-Assessed the pleasantness and intensity of emotional language used

Question 9

Findings/conclusions

Answer 9

A number of differences were found between the psychopaths and the non-psychopaths in how they used language when describing the murder they had committed

Question 10

Instrumental language

Answer 10

Psychopaths used more subordinating conjunctions, suggesting premeditated acts aimed at achieving specific goals

Question 11

Hierarchy of needs

Answer 11

Psychopaths used more words associated with low-level physiological and material needs, whereas non-psychopaths used more words relating to higher level emotional or spiritual needs

Question 12

What other ways did psychopaths and non-psychopaths differ?

Answer 12

Emotional expression-dysfluencies, psychological distancing and emotional content of language

Question 13

Explain dysfluencies

Answer 13

Psychopaths speech contained 33% more ‘um’ and ‘ah’ phrases, reflecting the effort they had to put in to come across positively

Question 14

Explain psychological distancing

Answer 14

They used more past tense verbs and included more articles, suggesting a distance between themselves and the murders they committed

Question 15

Explain emotional content of language

Answer 15

It was found that the higher a person’s ‘Factor 1’ score was on the PCL-R, the lower they scored on pleasantness and intensity of emotional language

Question 16

How does Hancock’s study link to the psychodynamic perspective?

Answer 16

-Suggests differences in language are likely beyond conscious control-our behaviour is due to unconscious control
-The idea of psychological distancing can be a form of ego defence mechanism