Individual Differences (CONTEMPORARY) - measuring differences - HANCOCK Flashcards
psychopath
an individual who exhibits abnormally high levels of selfishness and has little or no conscience
maslow’s hierarchy of needs
1943 - theory identified 5 types of motivation/needs that all humans thrive off and the needs must be progressed through in a fixed order. Psychopaths focus on ‘basic psychological needs’ like food, sex and shelter but higher level needs like relationships, spirituality, self esteem have little interest to them
language
language directly communicates an individual’s thoughts to another person
analysing psychopathic language
psychopaths use more contradictory logically inconsistent statements than non psychopaths - Williamson 1993
narratives of psychopaths contained fewer cohesive ties (words which link ideas together) relative to the amount of speech they provided and provide more details than non psychopaths - Brinkley et al 1999
the study
researchers analysed the language characteristics of psychopaths on three characteristics
1. their instrumental nature
2. their unique material and socioemotional needs
3. emotional deficit
their instrumental nature
psychopaths appear to view the world and others instrumentally as theirs for the taking - Hancock was interested in testing if psychopaths’ instrumental orientation would be reflected in their speech in their use of justifications for their actions
their unique material and socioemotional needs
basic psychological needs maters more to psychopaths than satisfying higher level needs - Hancock was interested to see if psychopaths narratives contained more semantic references to psychological and material needs such as food, drink, clothing, sex and resources
emotional deficit
psychopaths exhibt a generalised deficit in their ability to experience emoions themselves and to recognise the emotions that other people are feeling - Hancock hypothesised that this emotional deficit might lead psychopaths to
1. produce fewer and less intense emotional words
2. produce more disfluencies (uh,um)
3. uses language that reflects increased psychological distancing from a lack of current personal responsibility
aim
examine whether language of psychopaths and non psychopaths differ when describing murder narratives
sample
52 male murderers - 14 psychopathic and 38 non psychopathic
matched on key characteristics like age, length since murder was committed
research method
self report method - semi structured/open ended interviews in form of step wise interview
procedure
potential participants asked if they would be interested in taking part in a research study
interested individuals underwent a psychopathy assessment using the psychopathy checklist revised (PCL-R)
assessments conducted by extensively trained prison psychologists or a researcher who was well trained in the coding of the PCL-R
using a cut off score of 2, 14 offenders were classified as psychopathic and 38 not
participants interviewed - at the beginning of interview the purpose was to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their homicide offence and the procedure was verbally explained to the prisoner
participants were audio taped and asked to describe their homicide offences in as much detail as possible using the step wise method
interviews lasted 25 minutes
describe the PCL-R
psychopathy checklist revised - characterised by 20 criteria scored from 0-2 with a maximum score of 40. The clinical diagnostic cut off for psychopathy is scores of 30 or above
describe the interviewers
two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant all of whom were blind to the psychopathy scores of the offenders
what happened to the narratives
they were transcribed as accurately as possible and then checked to ensure spelling errors were corrected, all interviewer comments were deleted and proper nouns and abbreviations were spelled out for analysis
wmatrix
language analysis programme which compared parts of speech and semantic concepts contained in the psychopath and non psychopath transcripts. The wmatrix compared word usage between the two groups to see if there were any significant differences
DAL
dictionary of affect in language - dictionary based analysis tool providing individual words with emotional ratings. Many words that do not describe emotions are capable of communicating a clear emotive tone. The analysis assesses the emotional properties of language based on whether the world is pos/neg low/high intensity and low/high imagery. A score for pleasantness and intensity of emotional language is produced for each participant’s statement
results - words
no significant difference found in the average number of words used between the two groups, psychopaths didn’t say any more or less than non psychopaths when describing their crimes
instrumental language analysis
psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions than controls, because, since, as, so, that, suggesting psychopaths were more likely to describe cause and effect relationships (justifications) when describing their murder
hierarchy of needs analysis
psychopaths used approximately twice as many words related to basic psychological needs including eating, drinking and monetary resources when describing their murders than controls. This supports the view that psychopaths focus more on psychological needs than higher level needs
controls used significantly more language related to social needs including family, religion and spirituality than psychopaths
emotional expression in language
degree to which psychopaths has physiologically distanced themselves from their homicide examined through past and present tense verbs and rate of articles
psychopaths used more past tense verbs than controls
psychopaths used fewer present tense verbs than controls
psychopaths used a higher rate of articles than controls
psychopathic language was significantly less fluent than controls - 33% more uhs and ums than controls
results
psychopaths used twice as many words related to basic psychological needs including eating, drinking and monetary resources when describing their murders compared to controls. This concludes that psychopaths focus more on the more physiological lower levels of maslow’s hierarchy of needs than non psychopaths
psychopaths produced more past tense verbs than controls concluding that psychopaths are more likely than non psychopaths to speak in terms of cause and effect relationships when describing their crime- they view he crime as a logical outcome
strength of research method
quasi experiment so able to gain insight into something otherwise able to manipulate - IV whether participants were psychopaths or not
research method weakness
use of self report in form of semi structured interview to gather data to the language of psychopaths, psychopaths are manipulative so can’t be sure of validity
strength of data
qualitative data obtained via self report interviews allowing the researchers to capture in detail the richness of language used to describe each homicide
weakness of data
raw homicide narratives were too detailed and varied to allow direct comparison
ethics
participants not deceived regarding purpose of the interview however it is unclear whether the prisoners knew that they were being assessed for psychopathy or that they were being compared against another group of prisoners
prisoners volunteered to take part so they gave fully informed consent
no mention of offenders being told that they could withdraw their data
confidentiality was maintained
sample weakness
limited size - only 14 psychopaths and were all male and from the same country - Canada and all criminals convicted of the same crime - murder
ecological validity
participants were interviewed about their own real life crimes during which they provided detailed in depth accounts
high validity
the prisoners were not told about the precise aspects of language that the researchers were interested in investigating, making it less likely that participants modified their normal ways of speaking
each prisoner’s assessment of diagnosis (psychopath or non psychopath) was not disclosed to the interviewer proir to the interview aiming to reduce the dangers of researcher bias in the analysis of the data
highly valid measures were used to determine psychopathy
low validity
prisoners classed as psychopathic if they scored 25 or above on Hare’s PCL-R instead of the usual 30 or above so not all psychopaths classed as psychopaths were actually psychopathic
possible the way language is used could reflect other things apart from psychopathy like education level and culture
high reliability
good level of inter rater reliability relating to the coding of the PCL-R assessment
interviews with the prisoners all followed the same step wise interview procedure allowing as much of the interview content to come from the individual
use of wmatrix and DAL computer programmes analysing the prisoners’ language ensured the data for each participant was analysed in a consistent way
low reliability
interview procedure was open ended in style, it is likely that the narratives generated by the prisoners would have varied in length so there may have been variation in which parts of their crime prisoners described in the most detail
ethnocentrism
all participants from the same country so possible that other countries would use language in different ways according to the nature of their language or culture
in Canada there are two official languages and Hancock does not make it clear whether the participants they studied were English speakers or French speakers or both. The research would be less ethnocentric if it was based on speakers of both language traditions but as this isn’t mentioned it is probable they are all English speakers
