Unit 2; Core Studies; Hancock et al
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- Created on: 12-03-17 11:23
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- Hancock et al
- Background: word choice illustrates underlying cognitive & emotional processes
- IV psychopath or not DV: language used
- Sample
- 52 male murderers: 14 psychopaths, 38 non-psychopaths
- 16% 1st degree, 64% 2nd degree, 20% manslaughter
- all admitted to crime, avg age 39 years, mean time since crime 10.8yrs
- Hypotheses: psychopaths will...
- 1. use more causal language & conjunctions
- 2. use more semantic references to primary needs
- 3. use less emotional words & produce more disfluencies
- Procedure
- Stage 1: measured psychopathy levels using PCL-R by trained prison psychs,
- Stage 2: 25mins to give description of crime, narratives were transcribed
- Stage 3: transcripts analysed
- W-matrix tagged word type & semantic concpets
- Dictionary of affect in language analysed emotional properties
- Results
- subordinating conjunctions made up 1.82% of psychos text but 1.54% of non-psychos
- psychos pre-meditated crimes
- psychos focused on primary needs; food sex etc, non-psychos on family, religion
- psychos used 33% more disfluencies
- psychos used past tense verbs
- subordinating conjunctions made up 1.82% of psychos text but 1.54% of non-psychos
- Ethics:broke deception, withdrawal, consent, protection from harm
- Reliability & Validity
- IR: 10 random cases were recoded for psychopathy; inter-rater
- ER: larger sample would give clearer patterns
- IV: bias reduced as interviewer blind to psych status
- EV: would criminals redescribe their crimes? only male
- Ethnocentrism: everyone has an unconscious mind
- Summary
- Individual differences: people act on different levels of need
- Measuring differences: dif in language use
- Debates: is this useful?
- Links to psycho-dynamic perspective
- psychopaths are driven by their id
- unconscious mind controls language
- psychopaths distance themselves from their crimes as a defense mechanism
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