Component 2: Hancock (Individual Differences)

Question 1

What was Hancock’s study about?

Answer 1

Differences in language between psychopaths and non-psychopaths

Question 2

What was the background to Hancocks study into differences in language?

Answer 2

1. Patrick (2006) dound psychopaths exhibit no apparent defecits in intellect
2. Williamson (1993) found psychopaths used more contradictory, logically inconsistent statements
3. Psychological distancing - use of past tense can reveal detatchment of emotions from negative events

Question 3

What theories was Hancock’s study based upon?

Answer 3

1. Language directly communicates an individuals thoughts to another person
2. Language determines thoughts
3. Thoughts determine language
4. Thoughts and language are distinct from one another
5. Language and thoughts are the same

Question 4

What was the research method of Hancock’s study?

Answer 4

Semi-structed open-ended interview (self-report)

Question 5

Describe the sample and sampling method in Hancock et al’s study.

Answer 5

52 male murderers (14 psychopathic, 38 non-psychopathic) incarerated in Canadian prisons
They volunteered to take part

Question 6

Describe the procedure of Hancock et al.s study.

Answer 6

1. Participants underwent a psychopathy test using the psychology checklist revised (PCL-R) which is characterised by 20 criteria scored from 0-2 for a maximum score of 40. The cutoff for psychopathy was scores of 25 or above.
2. They were tested by either one of 2 prison psychologists or 1 researcher.
3. Participants were then interviewed. At the beginning of the interview they were told the purpose of the study and the procedure was verbally explained.
4. Whilst being audio taped, partipcipants were asked to describe their homicide in as much detail as possible, ommitting no details. They were promted using the stepwise interview.
5. The interviewers were two senior psychology graduates and a research assistant, who were blind to the PCL-R scores
6. Interviews lasted approximately 25 minutes
7. The narratives were transcribed as close to verbatim as possible
8. Two text analyisis tools were used to analyse the transcribed
   (1) The corpus analysis programme Wmatrix, which analysed the number of times certain themes were found e.g. social actions
   (2) The Dictionary of Affect of Language (DAL) software programme measured the pleasantness and intensity of emotional language

Question 7

What were the results of Hancock’s study?

Answer 7

1. There was no significant difference in the average number of words produced by psychopaths and non-psychopaths
2. Psychopaths used approximately twice as many words related to basic physiological needs
3. Psychopaths used a significantly higher percentage of verbs in the past tense
4. Psychopaths produced more subordinating conjuctions (1.82%) than non-psychopaths (1.54%)

Question 8

What were the conclusions of Hancock’s study?

Answer 8

1. Psychopaths saw their crimes as more psychologically distant and had greater detatchment from the incident
2. Psychopaths are more likely to view their crime as a logical outcome of a plan
3. Describing an emotional event is quite difficult for a psychopath as they have to work hard to appear normal