Hancock et al 2011

Hancock et al 2011

Hancock et al

Research method

• Psychopathy was measured using Pschopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003).

• This study used semi-structured/open-ended interviews (a self-report method) which employed the Step-Wise Interview technique to gather

data in relation to the language of psychopaths and non-psychopaths who had committed murder.

• The narratives were subsequently transcribed and analysed through content analysis using the Wmatrix and the DAL.

other research- criminal thinking patterns

findings

The interviews of the psychopaths and controls produced a total of 127,376 words. The 14 psychopath narratives contained 29,562 words and

averaged 2,201.5 (SE = 408.1) per participant. The 38 control narratives contained 97,814 words and averaged 2,554.3 (SE = 367.0) per participants.

There was no significant difference in the average number of words produced by psychopaths and controls, t(50) = .59, ns.

Instrumental language analysis

- Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions than controls e.g. because, since, as, so that.

Hierarchy of needs analysis

- Psychopaths used approximately twice as many words related to basic physiological needs, including eating, drinking and monetary

resources when describing their murders than controls.

- Controls used significantly more language related to social needs, including family, religion and spirituality than psychopaths.

Emotional expression of language

- The degree to which the psychopaths had physiologically distanced themselves/were simply detached from their homicide was examined

through the use of the past and present form of verbs and the rate of articles:

Yochelson and Samenow

A study of thinking patterns in criminals.

Aim: To understand the make up of the criminal personality.

Design: A longitudinal study using interviews that spanned over a 14 year period. The interviews were based on Freudian therapy techniques which aimed to identify the root cause of the criminal behaviour.

Sample: 255 males from various backgrounds who had been found guilty by reasons of insanity and secured in a mental institution Yochelson and Samenow were doctors at this hospital. Only 30 of the participants completed the interviews, and only 9 made any significant progress towards rehabilitation.

Findings: Identified 52 thinking patterns that were common in the criminals.

These included:

•External attribution- they viewed themselves as the victim and blamed others for the situation.

•Lack of interest in responsible behaviour - see's it as pointless.

•Closed thinking - not receptive to criticism.

Conclusion: These 'errors' in thinking are not unique to criminals, but were suggested to be displayed more by criminals than law behaving citizens.

CONCLUSIONS :

• Psychopaths are more likely than non-psychopaths to describe cause and effect relationships when describing their murder.

• Psychopaths are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan than non-psychopaths.

• Psychopaths focus more on physiological needs than higher level social needs than non-psychopaths.

• Psychopaths are focused on a lower level of necessities in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than non-psychopaths.

• Psychopaths will linguistically frame their homicide as more in the past and in more psychologically distant terms than non-psychopaths.

• Psychopaths give less emotionally intense descriptions of their crimes and use less emotionally pleasant language than non-psychopaths.

• Psychopathic language is substantially more disfluent than that of non-psychopaths.

• Psychopaths describe powerful emotional events (their crimes) in an idiosyncratic manner.

• Psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level.

. Sample

• 52 male murders (14 psychopathic, 38 non-psychopathic) incarcerated in Canadian correctional facilities who admitted their crime and volunteered

for the study.

• 8 convictions (16%) were for first-degree murder, 32 (64%) of convictions were for second-degree murder and 10 (20%) of convictions were for

manslaughter.

• There were no differences between the type of crime (manslaughter, second-degree murder, first-degree murder) and psychopathy versus control

(non-psychopathy).

• Mean age at the time of their current homicide was 28.9 years (SD = 9.2, range of 14-50 years).

• The two groups did not differ on age (psychopaths: M = 39.71 years, SD = 7.53; controls: M = 39.91 years, SD = 9.76, t(50) = .06, ns.

• The two groups did not differ in the amount of time since the homicide was committed (psychopaths: M = 11.87 years, SD = 7.78; controls: M =

9.82, SD = 6.78, t(50) = .93, ns.

what is a psychopath ?

causes of psychopathy

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mindmelding/201301/what-is-psychopath-0

article form Psychology Today - explaining terms Psychopath / Sociopath

also explains ideas of criteria

DSM and Personality disorders:

DSM now uses the term "Anti-social personalty disorder"

characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior. It may also be defined as a continuous aspect of personality, representing scores on different personality dimensions found throughout the population in varying combination

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/05/11/scans-show-psychopaths-have-brain-abnormalities/38540.html

PROCEDURE

Firstly, potential participants were asked whether they would be interested in taking part in a research study.

• Interested individuals underwent a psychopathy assessment:

- Psychopathy was measured using the Psychology Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Psychopathy, as measured by the PCL-R is characterised by

20 criteria scored from 0 – 2 for a maximum score of 40. The clinical diagnostic cut-off for psychopathy is scores of 30 or above. (Further

details of this can be found in the original study.)

- The PCL–R assessments were either conducted by extensively trained prison psychologists or a researcher who was well trained in the

coding of the PCL–R (an inter-rater reliability check showed a significant positive correlation with p ≤ .001).

- Using a cut-off score of 25 (which had previously been justified for research purposes e.g. Jackson, Rogers, Neumann & Lambert, 2002), 14

offenders were classified as psychopathic and 38 as non-psychopathic.

• Participants were then interviewed. At the beginning of the interview, the purpose of the study (to examine the manner in which homicide

offenders recall their homicide offence) and the procedure were verbally explained.

• While being audio-taped, participants were asked to describe their homicide offences in as much detail as possible. In this open-ended

interviewing procedure, each participant was encouraged to provide as much information about the crime as possible from the beginning

to the end, omitting no details. Participants were prompted to provide to do this using a standardised procedure known as the Step-Wise

Interview (see Yuille, Marxson & Cooper, 1999).

• The interviewers were two senior psychology graduate students and one research assistant, all of whom were blind to the psychopathy scores

of the offenders.

• Interviews lasted about 25 minutes.

• The narratives were subsequently transcribed, as close to verbatim as possible and then checked to ensure spelling errors were corrected, all

interviewer comments were deleted and proper nouns and abbreviations were spelled out.

• Two text analysis tools were then used to analyse the transcripts:

(i) The corpus analysis programme Wmatrix (Rayson, 2003, 2008), which was used to compare parts of speech and to analyse semantic

concepts contained in th3e psychopath and control corpora.

(ii) The Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL) software programme (Whissell & Dewson, 1986) was used to examine the affective tone of the

words.

Jim Fallon

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/25/could-a-brain-scan-diagnose-you-as-a-psychopath

BACKGROUND

Patrick (2006) found psychopaths exhibit no apparent deficits in intellect.

• Previous studies have revealed that psychopaths’ language appears to be less cohesive than non-psychopaths:

- Cleckley (1976) observed, through case studies, that the discourse of psychopaths was more likely to include a tangential and incoherent

quality than non-psychopaths.

- Williamson (1993) analysed the narratives of psychopaths and non-psychopaths and found that the former used more contradictory, logically

inconsistent statements.

- Similarly, Brinkley, Newman, Harper& Johnson (1999) found that narratives of psychopaths contained fewer cohesive ties and more integrated

details than non-psychopaths.

• This study was the first to uniquely examine the specific qualities of psychopathic language using sophisticated statistical text analysis tools. The

researchers examined the language characteristics of psychopaths (in describing their violent crimes) on three major characteristics:

(i) Their instrumental nature.

(ii) Their unique material and socioemotional needs.

(iii)Their emotional deficit.

(The expectations of Hancock et al in relation to these three characteristics can be found in the original study.)

• Their aim was to examine whether the language of psychopaths reflected, as predicted, an instrumental/predatory world view, unique

socioemotional needs and a poverty of effect.

Hare Psychopathy checklist

Measuring Psychopathy

http://www.minddisorders.com/Flu-Inv/Hare-Psychopathy-Checklist.html

The twenty traits assessed by the PCL-R score are:

•glib and superficial charm

•grandiose (exaggeratedly high) estimation of self

•need for stimulation

•pathological lying

•cunning and manipulativeness

•lack of remorse or guilt

•shallow affect (superficial emotional responsiveness)

•callousness and lack of empathy

•parasitic lifestyle

•poor behavioral controls

•sexual promiscuity

•early behavior problems

•lack of realistic long-term goals

•impulsivity

•irresponsibility

•failure to accept responsibility for own actions

•many short-term marital relationships

•juvenile delinquency

•revocation of conditional release

•criminal versatility