Hancock (2011)

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

To examine language characteristics of psychopaths (when describing their violent crimes) on 3 major characteristics.

1. their instrumental nature
2. their unique material and socioemotional needs
3. their emotional deficit.

The study aimed to investigate whether the language of psychopaths reflected a predatory world view, unique socio-emotional needs and a poverty of affect

Question 2

What are the main characteristics of a psychopath?

Answer 2

• Don’t respond to emotional cues in same way to normal people
• Emotional deficit
• Appear selfish
• Manipulate - false emotions
• Little or no conscience

Question 3

How was psychopathy measured?

Answer 3

• Checklist devised by Robert Hare
• Called Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R)
• Uses 20 criteria, each scored from 0-2 (max score of 40).

Question 4

What are the 2 categories of Robert Hare’s checklist?

Answer 4

• Factor 1 - asses interpersonal and affective traits (e.g. superficial charm)
• Factor 2 - assess anti-social traits (e.g. impulsivity and irresponsibility)

Question 5

What was the clinical cut-off score for psychopaths on the PCL-R?

Answer 5

A score of 30 or above.

Question 6

What are subordinating conjunctions?

Answer 6

Words associated with cause and effect statements (e.g. ‘because’ , ‘since’ , ‘as’ , ‘so that’).

Question 7

What are disfluencies?

Answer 7

Breaks/irregularities/fillers within speech (e.g. ‘um’ , ‘uh’).

Question 8

What are some examples of articles?

Answer 8

‘a’ , ‘an’ , ‘the’

Question 9

What is an example of distancing?

Answer 9

Use of past tense to make yourself seem further away from something.

Question 10

Sample

Answer 10

A volunteer sample of 52 male murderers (first degree, second degree or manslaughter) from Canada, who had admitted their crime took part in the study.

Psychopathy was measured using Psychopathy Checklist Revised and judged 14 to be psychopaths and 38 to be non-psychopaths. The groups were matched on type of murder and age.

Question 11

Procedure

Answer 11

They were asked to describe their offences in as much detail as possible. They were prompted by interviewers to do this using a standardised procedure known as the Step-Wise Interview. Interviews lasted about 25 minutes and were recorded.

Two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant conducted the interviews and they were unaware of the psychopathy scores of the offenders. After the interviews the narratives were transcribed and then analysed using two different text analysis tools.

Question 12

Instrumental Language Analysis

Answer 12

Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions (1.82%) than non-psychopaths (1.54%) e.g. because, since, as, so that. This was thought to be due to they very straight forward thinking of rational cause-an-effect. Psychopaths are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan.

Question 13

Hierarchy of Needs Analysis

Answer 13

Psychopaths used approximately twice as many words related to basic physiological needs, including eating, drinking and monetary resources when describing their murders than non-psychopaths.

For example, money 26% for psychopaths and 0.16% for controls. This is because they have a lack of empathy and see psychological needs as more important that emotional needs.

Non-psychopaths used significantly more language related to social needs, including family, religion and spirituality than psychopaths (0.28% psychopaths and 0.57% for non-psychopaths).

Question 14

Emotional Expression of Language

Answer 14

The speech produced by psychopaths contained 33% more disfluences (e.g. um, uh) compared to non-psychopaths. ‘I got uh, I got high, and had a few beers, I like whiskey so I bought some whiskey, I had some of that, and then uh, went for a swim’ This implied that they found describing such an emotional event (murder) quite difficult, suggesting that they are working really hard to try to appear normal to the person they are talking to.

With regard to psychological distancing, psychopaths used a significantly higher percentage of verbs in the past tense (e.g. stabbed, killed) and the non-psychopaths used significantly higher percentage of of verbs in the present tense (e.g. stab, kill). This data suggests that psychopaths saw their crimes as more psychologically distant and had a greater detachment from the incident, and their language was less emotionally intense. This is because they don’t feel empathy for the victim and therefore can easily move on.