Hancock et al. (2011) - Language of Pschopaths

What is the aim?

To use statistical text analysis to examine the features of crime narratives provided by offenders

What was the experimental method?

Self report (quasi?)

What was the type of interview?

Semi-structured

What was the IV?

Whether participants are psychopathic murderers, or regular murderers

What was the DV?

The differences in the language differences:

• tone used

• psychological distancing

• disfluencies

What was the procedure?

• informed consent gained

• participants asked to outline their crime

• interviewers blind to what group participant was in

• standardised procedure: step-wise structure

• interviews lasted ~25 mins

• narratives transcribed (including disfluencies)

• errors were checked for using software

What software was used?

Wmatrix - analyses semantic concepts

DAL - assigns a score for pleasentness and intensity of emotional language

What were the results?

• instrumental language - psychopaths used more subordinating conjunctions, more likely to describe cause and effect

• hierarchy of needs - psychopaths referenced physiological needs, control referenced social needs and family, religion etc.

• emotional expression of language - psychopaths used more past tense, control used more present tense - seem more distant (no difference in time since murder in both groups)

• language fluency - psychopaths used 33% more disfluencies

Who were the participants?

• 52 murderers (14 psychopathic, 38 non)

• male

• from Canadian correctional facilities

• volunteer sampling (self selected)

• controls included: age, type of crime, time since crime

What are the conclusions?

• psychopaths will frame their homicide as more in the past - use distant terms

• psychopaths operate at a primitive but rational level