Hancock- Language Of Psychopaths

Question 1

What was a theory that the study was based on?

Answer 1

Underlying cognitive and emotional processes can be revealed through subtle patterns in word choice

Question 2

What did Hare find?

Answer 2

Studies of psychophysiology, neurology and behaviour have shown psychopaths to exhibit a wholly selfish orientation and emotional deficit

Question 3

What was the aim?

Answer 3

To see whether traits of psychopaths could be found in their speech

Question 4

How was psychopathy measured?

Answer 4

Psychopathy Checklist Revised

Question 5

Research method and design

Answer 5

Semi-structured / open- ended interviews which employ the Step-Wise Interview technique and gather data in relation to the language of psychopaths and non-psychopaths who had committed a murder

Question 6

What was done with the narratives?

Answer 6

Transcribed and analysed through content analysis using the Wmatrix and the DAL

Question 7

Sample number and qualities

Answer 7

52 male murderers (14 psychopathic, 38 non-psychopathic) that admitted their crime. 10 convictions were for man slaughter

Question 8

Sampling method

Answer 8

Volunteer sample

Question 9

How did the Psychopathy Checklist Revised work?

Answer 9

Psychopathy was measured using 20 criteria scored from 0 to -2 for a maximum score of 40.
30 or above is classed as psychopathic

Question 10

Who was the PCL-R conducted by?

Answer 10

Either by extensively trained prison psychologists or researchers who were well trained in the coding

Question 11

What was done before the interview?

Answer 11

Introduction - aim was explained ( to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their homicide offence ) and procedure

Question 12

How were the participants prompted to give as much detail of the events as possible?

Answer 12

Using a standard procedure known as the Step - Wise Interview

Question 13

How long did the interviews last?

Answer 13

About 25 minutes

Question 14

Which two analysis tools were used to analyse the transcript?

Answer 14

Wmatrix which was used to analyse the amount of times a certain theme was found in their language ( social actions, states and processes)

The Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) was used to provide a score for the pleasantness and intensity of emotional language in each statement

Question 15

How were the results similar between the psychopaths and non-psychopaths?

Answer 15

The average number of words used was the same

Question 16

A finding/conclusion of the instrument language analysis

Answer 16

Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions. This was thought to be due to the straight forward thinking of rational cause-and-effect. Psychopaths are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan

Question 17

Hierarchy of needs analysis for psychopaths

Answer 17

Produced twice as many words related to physiological needs when describing their murders. This is because they have a lack of sympathy and see physiological needs as more important than emotional needs

Question 18

Hierarchy of need analysis control

Answer 18

Used significantly more language related to social needs

Question 19

Emotional expression in language (disfluences)

Answer 19

Psychopaths produced 33% more disfluences (um,eh). This implied that they found describing such an emotional event quite difficult, suggesting they’re trying really hard to try to appear normal

Question 20

Emotional expression in language ( physiological distancing)

Answer 20

Psychopaths used a significantly higher amount of verbs in the past tense. This suggests that psychopaths saw their crimes as more physiologically distant and had a greater detachment from the incident, and their language was less emotionally intense. No empathy