Paper 2 - Hancock et al On Psychopaths Flashcards
What is the background of this study ?
Research had revealed that words can reveal a person’s mental state, meaning text analysis can be used to analyse a psychological state.
There was little attempt to analyse linguistic styles of psychopaths.
What are the aims of this study
To test how crime narratives differ between psychopathic and non psychopathic murderers, by analysing language characteristics.
What type of study is this ?
A Quasi experiment using semi-structured interviews.
Explain the sample of this study.
14 psychopathic and 38 non psychopathic male murderers serving a prison sentence in Canadian correctional facilities.
They all admitted to their crime and volunteered by self selected sampling.
They had a mean age of 28.9
8- first degree murder
32- second degree murder
10- manslaughter
2 unspecified
What were the materials of this study?
PCL-R test:
20 questions, each scored from 0-2, 40 max marks can be scored.
Factor 1- affective/interpersonal traits, e.g. superficial charm, lack of remorse and pathological lying.
Factor 2- impulsive and antisocial traits, such as criminal versality and a parasitic lifestyle.
This test is highly reliable and valid
A person is give a clinical diagnosis with a score of 30, however, in his study they used 25.
Explain the procedure of this study.
- Taking the PCL-R test: 39 cases got a highly trained prison psychologist to complete the assessment . The remaining 13 were conducted by a researcher.
- Interviews: All interviews were audiotaped, they were told that the purpose of the study was to examine the manner in which homicide offenders recall their crime. The semi structured interviews used the step-wise interviews technique. Pps were asked to describe their homicide offence in as much detail as possible from beginning to end. The interviewers were 2 senior psychologist graduates and a research assistant, all of whom were blind to the PCL-R scores. Interviews lasted around 25 mins and they were transcribed.
- Wmatrix: A corpus analysis programme used to compare parts of speech. It achieves 96-97% accuracy in classifying parts of speech. It also classifies words into semantic categories with a 92% accuracy.
4.DAL: Examines the exact tone of words and assesses emotional properties of language, it assigns a score for the intensity of emotional language.
Explain the results for the number of words spoken.
The 14 psychopaths averaged at 2,201.5 words per person.
The 38 non psychopaths averaged at 2,554.3 words per person.
Explain the results for hierarchy of needs analysis.
Psychopaths used approximately twice as many word related to basic psychological needs, in contrast non psycho[ahs related to social needs more.
Psychopaths have a frequency of mentioning food 0.30%, but non psychopaths have a frequency of 0.12%.
Psychopaths have a frequency of mentioning family 0.28%, but non psychopaths have a frequency of 0.57%.
Psychopaths are focused on lower level of necessities. However, it may be because psychopaths are more likely to remember more events surrounding that day like what they ate.
Explain the results for instrumental language analysis
Psychopaths - 1.82% of words were subordinate conjunctions/instrumental.
Non psychopaths - 1.54% of words were subordinating conjunctions/instrumental.
Psychopaths are more likely to use casually framed language about their crime, they view it as a logical outcome and frame their actions as goal orientated (cause and effect).
Explain the results for emotional expression in language.
Psychopaths used more past tense verbs (6.08%) and non psychopaths used less (5.59%).
Referencing events in the past is to maintain an emotional distance, however, they could be better at following instructions and were more complaint in describing the crime in past tens e. However, this is unlikely a they’re not known for their compliance.
Explain the results for disfluency.
psychopathic language used approximately 33% more disfluencies.
Describing a powerful emotional event in an appropriate manner requires impression management , placing an increased cognitive load on the psychopaths, leading to less fluent speech.
Explain the results for DAL.
offenders with lower empathy scores in the PCL-R test used less intense emotional terms and more negative emotional terms . Violence may be less emotionally difficult. Or it may reflect that during their crime they couldn’t fulfil many of their basic thrill seeking drives.
Evaluate the research methods and techniques used.
Strengths: Quasi experiment allows the study of IVs that cannot be manipulated. Semi-structured interviews means that some questions are decided in advance, it allowed interviewers to ask some questions that gave prompts to include more detail, meaning that rich detail could be recorded for analysis.
Weaknesses: Some pps may have forgotten some details of the crime and might have recalled more with specific questions. The interview only concerned one event - the homicide. Differences between the 2 groups may be different when describing a less intense event. Hancock et al pointed out that it would have been better to ask pps to recall the same event from a video. A quasi experiment cannot control the conditions or participant variables such as, memory levels, communication skills.
Evaluate the sampling bias in this study.
Strengths: A large number of psychopaths were fairly easily identified because it is 15.25% of prison population. Finding them in the general population would’ve been harder
Weaknesses: Psychopathic murderers may be different to non murderous psychopaths. All pps were volunteers who may differ in important ways from a non volunteer sample.
Evaluate the ethnocentrism
The study involved Canadian prisoners so it represents a individualistic culture. It is possible that psychopathic behaviour differs in other cultures like collectivist cultures, therefore, the results cannot be generalised.
