Hancock et al (2011)

Wmatrix Text Analysis

This is a program used to compare parts of speech. It achieves 97% accuracy in classifying parts of speech as nouns, adjectives, verbs etc. It can also classify words in to categories (e.g. money) with 92% accuracy. In Hancock this tool was used to analyse the amount of times certain themes were found in their language e.g. social actions, states and processes, time etc.

This corpus analysis is slightly more in depth than counting types of words because it extracts language information. For example, it can distinguish between 'The mother yelled at her child' and 'The child yelled at her mother'

Unique material and socio-emotional needs

Background

Discussion

Aims of the study

How does the study link

to the following debates:

1. Usefulness

2. Free will/Determinism

3. Socially sensitive research

Satisfying basic physical and material needs (e.g. food, sex, shelter) matters more to psychopaths than satisfying meaningful relationships or self-esteem. Hancock wanted to see if there were more references to food, drink, clothing, sex and money, and fewer references to higher level needs such as love and family

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

1. Their instrumental nature

2. Their unique material and socio-emotional needs

3. Their emotional deficit

Exam Structure Q c)

- Williamson (1993) analysed the narratives of psychopaths and non-psychopaths and found that psychopaths were more incoherent (confusing).

- On the other hand Porter (2009) found that psychopaths were 2.5 times likely than non-psychopaths to be successful in their parole applications, despite being more likely to offend.

Instrumental nature

• Identify 2 theories that could be used to resolve the issue
• Explain how the theory could be applied to the issue with very specific instructions i.e. needs to be replicable
• Explain how your suggestion would resolve the issue
• Explain how the theory could be applied to the issue with very specific instructions i.e. needs to be replicable
• Explain how your suggestion would resolve the issue

Emotional deficit

Exam Structure Q b)

As psychopaths appear to view the world and others as theirs for the taking. Hancock wanted to see if there was more usage of words such as 'because', 'since', 'as', 'so that'. These words are associated with cause and effect statements and would suggest offenders whose crimes are premeditated and motivated by the achieving of an external goal and are, therefore, open to the use of causally framed explanatory language.

So why did Hancock carry out his research?

What are the frontal

and temporal lobes

responsible for?

• Identify the issue in a core study and compare this to the issue in the article
• Describe the procedure and results in detail
• Use evidence from the article to support the issue and then explain how the issue is similar to the issue from the core study

Psychopaths tend to find it difficult to experience emotions themselves and they also find it difficult to recognise emotions of others. Hancock believed that this would be shown in 3 ways:

1. Fewer and less intense emotional words.

2. He also thought they would produce more disfluencies (e.g. 'uh', 'um') showing how challenging they find it to describe something that has happened in a way that appears normal to others.

3. Finally he believed that they would use language that reflects psychological 'distancing' from and a lack of personal responsibility for the crime, such as a higher rate of past tense and fewer present tense verbs.

Hancock wanted to investigate the idea that psychopaths could be identified through the way they speak. This study was the first to uniquely examine the specific qualities of psychopathic language using sophisticated statistical text analysis tools.

Comparisons

Using the exam structure, note down two similarities and 2 differences between Hancock and Gould.

GRAVEL SQUANDERS

Play at 7:36 - 21:45

Socrative quiz

Exam questions

Section C

Complete the 2 quizzes to help you revise and evaluate the following for Hancock:

Data, Reliability, Sample, Validity, Ethnocentrism and

Ethics

What is a psychopath?

Procedure

1. Identify the psychological issue raised by this article. Support your answer with evidence from the article [5]

2. Briefly outline psychological research and how it relates to the issue you have identified. Support your answer with evidence from the article [8]

3. Use your psychological knowledge to suggest how the issue could be managed [8]

4. Assess your suggestion for managing the issue you have identified [14]

1. Gould conducted a review IQ testing. Explain what a review is [2]

2. Outline a strength of a review [2]

3. Describe one piece of quantitative data and one piece of qualitative data from Gould's review [4]

4. Describe a difference between an individual explanation of behaviour and a situational explanation of behaviour [4]

5. Describe the method used by Hancock [4]

Procedure

Conclusions

Interested individuals underwent a psychopathy assessment:

- Psychopathy was measured using the Psychopathy Checklist Revised. This characterised by 20 criteria scored from 0 – 2 for a maximum score of 40.

For 39 of the men the PCL–R assessments was conducted by an extensively trained prison psychologist. The others were assessed by 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).

They used a cut-off score of 25/40 to determine psychopath from non-psychopath.

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

Participants were prompted by interviewers using a standardised procedure known as the Step-Wise Interview which helps to maximize the info obtained by the ppts.

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.

Exam structure Q d)

• Describe and explain a strength/weakness of your programme
• Challenge - This could be an improvement of a weakness, it could be a direct opposing argument

Sample

Emotional Deficit:

• Psychopaths generally used less positive or emotionally intense language. There were more instances of callousness and lack of empathy in their narratives

'I just turned around and looked at him and I just stabbed him and I said, 'None of your fucking business'.

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

8 convictions were for first-degree murder, 32 of convictions were for second-degree murder and 10 of convictions were for

manslaughter.

The two groups did not differ in age or the amount of time since the homicide was committed

Model answer Q a)

A psychopath is someone who exhibits a reduced capacity for moral responsibility and may act extremely selfishly compared to the general population. It has been suggested that psychopaths may often find success as business people, politicians and cult leaders.

Psychopaths describe powerful emotional events in a rational but more primitive way compared to others. Their analysis suggests that, compared to non-psychopaths, psychopaths:

1. tend to view their crimes as the logical outcome of a plan

2. are more likely to focus on their own basic physiological needs

3. are less emotional and positive in their speech

4. are more emotionally detached from their crimes

Theories in which the study is based

Emotional deficit:

• The speech produced by psychopaths contained 1/3 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'

• 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.

Identify the issue: One psychological issue raised by the article is that children are copying bad behaviour from cartoons shown on television.

Evidence from the article x3: Evidence to support this suggestion is firstly in the title, ‘....... children copy cartoon character by answering back’. Within the article itself it says that many parents ‘complain their sons and daughters have started to copy the ‘naughty’ behaviour of the cartoon pig’. The article also says that one father reported that his son had started to splash in muddy puddles copying ‘Peppa’s favourite pastime’ and a mother complained that her daughter repeatedly said “no” and “yuk”, in a high and mighty manner ‘just like Peppa does’.

Explain using psychological theories or knowledge: This infers children are observing behaviour shown by significant others on television, in this case Peppa Pig, and then, through the process of social learning, imitating the behaviour shown when the opportunity arises.

Words can reveal significant insights about psychological functioning e.g. Pennebaker et al (2003)

Quantitative word counts can be used as a tool in the identification and examination of abnormal psychological processes (Oxman et al)

Therefore, measuring language can be a useful tool that can help to identify patterns of abnormal behaviour

The Dictionary of Affect in Language (DAL)

Results

This software programme was used to examine the emotional properties of the language. Each participants transcript was analysed individually, with a score being given for the pleasantness and intensity of emotional language in each statement.

DAL looks at a number of dimensions in language such as; evaluation (positive vs negative) and imagery i.e. visually descriptive (low imagery vs high).

There was no significant difference in the average number of words produced by psychopaths and non-psychopaths

Instrumental language analysis:

Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjunctions (1.82%) than non-psychopaths (1.54%) e.g. because, since, as, so that.

Hierarchy of needs analysis i.e. Unique material and socio-emotional needs:

- 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

- 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).

Important questions

1. How does Hancock relate to the Individual differences?

2. How does Hancock relate to its key theme of 'Measuring differences'?

3. What is the new conclusion/understanding of behaviour as highlighted by Hancock?

4. How does Hancock change our understanding of individual behaviour, social diversity & cultural diversity?

Hancock et al (2011)

The language of psychopaths