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Correlating Psychopathy With Speech Patterns
florescent_beige writes "Researchers from Cornell and UBC report that analysis of speech patterns using Wmatrix, along with something called the Dictionary of Affect in Language (see a demo here), shows that psychopaths speak differently from other people, at least statistically (abstract). Although they say that these differences are 'presumably beyond conscious control,' the authors do not say if the method has any predictive use. Regardless, the popular press has already gone headline-nonlinear about it."
With an irresponsible paper title like that, the authors were inviting a media circus. We're talking about research into people with mental disorder here, not a new friday night drama series.
May the Maths Be with you!
When I was younger, I used "because" and "since" in my writing about twice as often. Never terribly pleased by the effect--that's just how it came out. They are fairly weak transitions, useful mostly if you want a weak transition which detracts less from a central element.
This excess tapered off as I became more deeply immersed in my subject matter with age and experience. In my own history, these words were sign posts of incomplete thinking.
From TFA:
"psychopathic murderers make identifiable word choices – beyond their conscious control – when talking about their crimes."
So we aren't talking about all psychos, just the murdering ones. And apparently only about how they refer to their crimes. But they immediately make the jump to using it as a predictive tool on social media, making it sound like you could scan peoples' Facebook postings and play "spot the killer".
Seems like a troll to me. Shame on you Cornell University Press Relations.
There may be something to this. Certainly if I hear someone using the terms "liver", "fava beans" and "chianti" too often in a conversation, I start to get worried.
It says that psychopaths use more connecting conjunctions than average people, words like "since" and "because".
In other words they speak better English than the average no-clause baby talk people use when they're not writing.
Yay, this means that when courts are abusing the latest research into psychopaths to decide how to punish people, intelligent people will be treated worse. They're already misusing research like this.
I think this is true for all of them. A psychopath just doesn't give a damn about anyone else. This is what you can identify him by.
I have no doubt that the biggest a-holes you can think of are all psychopaths. Possibly more or less by definition even though psychopaths/socipaths can be recognized by brain pattern.
I said it before on slashdot, that a good way to know someone is like this, even when he tries to hide his nature to fit in as psychopaths/sociopaths do, is by looking at reversible arguments.
George W.Bush for example when the elections were not settled and he said that Gore should let him get on with what he needed to do... As the vote count was close, Gore could have given the exact argument to Bush. Of course such reversible arguments are non-arguments, and such a-holes like Bush use them because they can't hide their identity well enough. They have a set of ways of acting and reacting which fools some people, but not those who take note.
A Horizon programme (BBC, UK) recently talked about psychopaths in "Are you good or are you evil" and these people are often in boards of companies, or high level bosses or whatever. A way they said they could identify these psychopaths is by the fact that half the people working for such a person hates him, the other half think he (she?) is great. This already shows the claim they made psychopaths are hard to spot is BS. People who look at the way people speak, the feeling/emotion in it I mean, know immediately when someone is a psychopath.
I mean, who thought you could seriously learn about psychopathic killers from a bunch of talking heads?
I am officially gone from
Hello, speech analysis, I am proud to welcome you to the select club of phrenology, graphology, astrology and numerology.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How do they know the control group wasn't psychopaths? Maybe what they are measuring is the speech pattern differences in relaxed "out of the closet" pyscopaths versus psychopaths in hiding.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It would be interesting to compare high level managerÂs speech patterns against the results of this study...
As Yoda's evil twin would say.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Can we use something like IBM's Watson to realtime parse and evaluate political rhetoric?
A "Psyco Score" at the bottom of the screen during election debates would be quite novel...
For the budding psychopaths out there who want to "fit in" better with society, here's how to change your speech patterns.
1) Join Toastmasters along with someone you see frequently (a significant other, close friend, or coworker).
It's cheap, and they will teach you ways to improve your speech - how to recognize disfluencies, for instance.
2) Play a game with your partner where every time they hear you make a mistake, they say "ding!". That's all - just "ding!" every time they hear a problem.
(For what it's worth I've found that GF's are particularly good at noticing such flaws.)
It takes a week or two, but the constant feedback will eventually sink in and you'll be able to hold long conversations without saying "ah", "um", "you know", and so on.
3) Rhythm, meter, and pauses are more difficult. Find a newscaster whose vocal style you like and record one of their broadcasts.
It doesn't matter whether you agree with their point of view, only that you like their vocal variety. (You could choose Rush Limbaugh, for instance.) I chose Morley Safer.
Edit the broadcasts into individual sentences and rip these to a CD as individual tracks. While you are driving to work, play a sentence on infinite repeat. Recite the sentence along with the speaker over and over. Try to recite it exactly, mimicking the pauses and intonations.
You'll spend a few iterations just remembering the words. Once you know the words, your ear will start to pick out subtle emphasis and pauses used by the speaker. You'll start to learn when to pause (after prepositions, for instance), where to put emphasis to make a point, and so on.
When you get bored, switch to another sentence.
Don't do the mimicry thing more than a couple of weeks or you'll end up sounding *exactly* like the broadcaster. Switch to another one, mix it up a little.
As a side effect of all this, people will view your method of speech as more meaningful, you will be perceived as more reliable and confident, and people will give you greater respect.
The psychopath uses a teleprompter?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
no fucking way word patterns indicate psychopathology you ignorant motherfucker
i'll take a fucking broomstick and ram it down your fucking gullet if i hear one fucking peep from your ignorant piehole about word patterns indicating a propensity for psychopathology and then rape your mother with the same fucking broomstick. are fucking listening to me?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We already know that excessive pauses in acting predict stupid commercials for Internet Startups and really bad science fiction. Damn... You... Khhaaaaannnn!!!!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
"Vote for me, and I'll set you free!"
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I work for the government, you insensitive clod!
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
psychopaths used more conjunctions such as “because “ or “since,”
Sounds like another attempt to label left-brain people as psychopaths.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This would never be allowed to be used in America. God forbid politicians and CEOs hear about this technology.
Life is not for the lazy.
The real meat of their software is a small routine that counts references to Huey Lewis, any mention of this artist more than 3 times in a 10 minute period results in a 100% match.
I think the point is, you don't get into positions of great power like that without stepping on a lot of people and totally throwing out your innate sense of right and wrong...which you probably didn't have in the first place. That goes for both Bush and Gore.
Most experts count roughly one percent of the population as psychotic. The researchers want to take methods used to analyze the language of psychopaths and apply it to the general population using social media.
Psychotic != psychopathic. These are two entirely differing diagnoses.
For the record, most experts count roughly 4% of the population as psychopathic, though a much smaller percentage actually commit violent crimes.
I know it's a joke, but we can try a checklist....
Abstract:
"Psychopaths (relative to their counterparts) included more rational cause-and-effect descriptors (e.g., ‘because’, ‘since’), focused on material needs (food, drink, money), and contained fewer references to social needs (family, religion/spirituality)."
Check.
"Psychopaths’ speech contained a higher frequency of disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) indicating that describing such a powerful, ‘emotional’ event to another person was relatively difficult for them."
Hmm, lets see.
Her mean mother steps then says to me "Hi!!"
Decked Sally in the face and punched her in the eye
Punched her in the belly and stepped on her feet
Slammed the child on the hard concrete
The bitch was strong, the kids was gone
Somethin was wrong I said, "What was goin on?"
I tried to break up, I said, "Stop it, just leave her!"
She said, "If I can't smoke none, she can't either!"
No, doesn't seem like it.
"Finally, psychopaths used more past tense and less present tense verbs in their narrative, indicating a greater psychological detachment from the incident, and their language was less emotionally intense and pleasant."
"La Di Da Di, we likes to party
We don't cause trouble, we don't bother nobody
We're, just some niggaz who're on the mic
And when we rock up on the mic we rock the mic (right)"
Doesn't fit either.
What about a different diagnosis, narcissitic personality disorder?
"I woke up around 10 o'clock in the mornin
I gave myself a strech up, a mornin yawn and
went to the bathroom to wash up
I threw some soap on my face and put my hands up on a cup
and said um "Mirror mirror, on, the wall
Who is the top Dogg of them all?"
There was a rubble dubble, five minutes it lasted
The mirror said, "You are you conceited bastard"
Well that's true, that's why we never have no beef
So I slipped off my khakis and my gold leaf
Used Oil of Olay, cuz my skin gets pale
And then I got the file, for my fingernails
I'm true to the style on my behalf"
It isn't "numerology" if psycophaths can be statistically identified by numerical analysis.
For example, while most people tend to include certain numbers in their speech more than most, like "ninety-nine", psychopaths make bizarre choices like "fifty-three" and "forty-seven".
the wonderful Wizard of Oz. because because because because BECAUSE!!! Because of the wonderful things he does!
Is it possible that the language they are selecting for is simply some form of "prisoner's dialect", instead of a sampling of "sociopathy"? For example, Canadians tend to punctuate verbally with "Eh", and New England urban teens typically finish sentences with "Yo", and use the term "wicked" a lot (or at least they did 20 years ago when I was there). This could be an interpretation of a dialectical shift based on the environment the subject is now occupying, rather than any useful data. It might also be wise to consider the length of incarceration of the subjects of this study, and perhaps use the non-violent (or even non-offenders) occupying the same space as a control group.
Alternatively, one could assume these dangerously violent offenders are typically kept separated from the general population (of prisoners), and so perhaps the language they use is based more upon their observation of the guards and/or legal teams' speech. Assigning the term "psychopathic behavior" to the speech patterns of lawyers and psychiatrists would be amusing, but unhelpful with achieving the stated goal.
Finally, I would find it useful to analyze the recorded speech and writing patterns of someone who was not convicted of a crime until much later in their lifetime, allowing us to study the psychopathic patterns "in the wild".
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"Yo, dawg, I heard you liked prison..."
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So... what you're saying is that the capitalist system/structure is designed to reward those with psychopathic tendencies?
Note to moderators: I'm not sure this should be modded "Funny"
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Psychopathy is an illness, it's not presently curable and the only methods of treatment tend to just result in more abhorrent behavior.
Can you provide a currently accepted manual of diagnosis that lists psychopathy as a disease or disorder? I've looked through the DSM and ICD and can't seem to find it. The reason it's not in either of the accepted diagnostics manuals is because it would be a a Personality Disorder and the personality disorder criteria includes "the individual's characteristic and enduring patterns of inner experience and behaviour as a whole deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range". Psychopathic behavior does not "deviate markedly from the culturally expected and accepted range" in western cultures. Psychopathic behavior is specifically encouraged in western cultures. You will start to see other Personality Disorders drop out of the diagnostics manuals as time progresses. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is already proposed for deletion, as our culture again is not only accepting, but outright promoting Narcissistic behavior.
In general the problem with Personality Disorders is that by definition they are dependent of transient cultural opinion. These are not disorders, but behaviors that can be changed if change is wanted, but they can not be corrected by treatment because they are not a disease.
Interesting numbers they used... 14 "psychopaths", and 38 "controls"...
Perhaps they selected their target/control groups based on how well they appeared to match the anticipated results? How many subjects were actually interviewed, and where is the rest of the data?
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While Adderall is an amphetamine and is related to speed and meth, it is different than both. Taken per label, it does not have the stimulant effects of speed or meth, as it will be time released. Taken correctly, it does not easily lead to addiction or junkie behavior in most people. Whereas speed and meth would.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I'm hoping that things in the DSM are included or not included because having the condition is harmful to your self or others.
Being clinically depressed does adversely affect your life. Being manic depressive does affect your life. Being a psychopath is often very harmful to the people around the psychopath. I think some kids diagnosed with ADS are just a little more active than some "well behaved" kids and sometimes we are too quick to label them and medicate them.
Now that religious myth has less sway on many peoples moral values, being homosexual is no longer seen as harmful. I'm assuming you are being sarcastic when you state simply being homosexual is riskier than being heterosexual.
Anarchists never rule
you're right that it's not meth. however, there's both extended- and instant-release adderall. even the extended-release is just a mixture of amphetamine salts which are metabolized at different rates, thus spreading out the response. speed is just a slang word for amphetamine (sometimes specifically dextroamphetamine which is in adderall anyways), and so adderall is speed by definition.
very roughly speaking, two measures of adderall will have at least as much effect as one measure of standard amphetamine. seeing as dosage varies by doctor, i don't see why it would have less addictive potential than any other orally-consumed form of speed.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Note that the study is not saying that psychopaths speak different from ordinary people. They compared 14 psychopathic murderers to 38 murderers who were not diagnosed as psychopaths.
My interpretation would be that the average murderer has below average English skills, while psychopaths try blend in with the non-murderers. Hence they sound different.
And they found that the following individuals sounded like psychos: Lloyd Blankfein, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, Stephen Schwarzman, Peter G. Peterson, both of the Koch brothers, Hank Paulson, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle, Jonathan Kay, ........
the popular press has already gone headline-nonlinear about it."
Don't get any ideas. Slashdot is also the popular press.
Funny you should mention Afghanistan... It turns out that the Red Army did, in fact, have a rather hard time there with the people who later became the Taliban. So hard, in fact, that they were eventually forced to retreat despite employing brutal tactics and the occupation was described as Russia's Vietnam.
I work as a transcriptionist, including transcribing political debates, and having to listen to people word for word I can attest that you can get a sense of when people are lying, and when they are saying something new versus something already known from their perspective, although it's not clear how reliable the correlations really are.
I'm wondering what their control group was. If they're analysing the speech of people "when talking about their crimes", then they presumably are not comparing them with the general population who have no convictions.
A reasonable analysis would note that the behavior tends to prevent offspring and dramatically increase STD occurrence. It's thus clearly harmful, even ignoring the social effects and suicide rate. We also know it appears to be mainly caused by the womb environment, making it a birth defect.
Funny, nothing you suggest here about the harms of homosexuality are psychological harms. You realize that the DSM is designed to classify people who are experiencing mental problems, right? So, "lack of procreativity" shouldn't be included, or else being post-vasectomy would be in the DSM. "Increased STD occurrence" shouldn't be included, or else refusing to wear a condom would be a cause for being in the DSM... as would being a teenager. Social effects and suicide rates? They examined those issues, it turns out that not all homosexuals experience social problems, nor do they all attempt suicide. In fact, some homosexuals seem to be quite well adjusted and capable of performing well in a professional career. The psychologists knew this, because they had well adjusted people working in their field.
Leaving it out of the DSM is pure politics, not evidence-based medicine.
It wasn't pure politics. There was a lot of politics, because the only reason why being homosexual was in the DSM was because people believed that you couldn't be homosexual without having mental, and/or social issues. As more and more psychologists came out as being homosexual, it forced the community to recognize that, hey, being homosexual did not automatically imply that the person required psychological intervention.
Before these psychologists came out, the only homosexuals that the psychologists ever dealt with were ones who were already having "comorbid" psychological issues. So, it turns out that the psychologists thought that homosexuality automatically implied psychiatric distress was because the only people who admitted to being homosexual to them were people who were in psychiatric distress. There was a confirmation bias going on. Mentally healthy homosexuals didn't come out, and so they were hidden. And they were hidden for good reason: to avoid discrimination.
As a total hyothetical, take for example the idea that the only time doctors ever saw an appendix was if it were inflamed and infected. They would naturally presume that the only state an appendix exists in is inflamed and infected. After all, they had never seen an uninfected appendix. Now, imagine that they finally do find someone who has died, and has an uninfected appendix. Clearly, it is now not the case that appendices are pathological. They're simply a variation of human anatomy.
In the same way, psychologists were forced to recognize that homosexuality does not automatically present with mental health issues. Other ancillary conditions of homosexual body health are not sufficient to make homosexuality into a mental health disorder.
As a final note: women are more susceptible to STDs, they have a higher incident of uterine, ovarian, and cervix cancer, and in fact, there are special parts of hospitals devoted solely to treating women. Does this mean being a woman should be declared a mental health disorder? No, clearly not. It's noted on their charts like being a smoker, as there are ancillary health issues that any doctor should be aware of, but "being a smoker" is not a health disorder, and neither is "being a woman". Just like "being homosexual" is not a health disorder.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
>Two text analysis tools were used to examine the crime narratives of 14 psychopathic and 38 non-psychopathic homicide offenders
The abstract indicates that the study only looked at homicide offenders, and compared them only to other homicide offenders, not to any non-homicide offenders. They also only looked at a total of 52 people which doesn't seem like enough to me. There are so many factors which can change an individual's speech patters that claiming that the findings mean anything at all is irresponsible.
Take this study with a statistically significant grain of salt.
I believe the traditional approach is to make sure someone honest knows the details of the planned trial in advance, including the number of subjects.
In which case, power should be as dispersed as possible to the people, and not to government. Sounds like good idea to me.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This article has surely caused massive paranoia amongst politicians. I reckon a few generals are nervous too. I can think of no greater affectation indicating psychopathy than that which can compulsively lie to those who would - and do - die for the liars. I just hope the World's Thorazine supplies can accommodate the District of Columbia; and I can think of a few individuals who might require a little more than a fair share. What we must first decide, is where to put them. I am thinking Novaya Zemlya might do, but Mars also remains an option in the event that Russia objects (likely).
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made. - Otto von Bismarck
While studying psychology is becomes readily apparent that they are or were on the ropes for years, derided by the rest of the medical establishment and desperate to prove their worth. The decisions to exclude homosexuality from their DSM was purely political. It also became apparent through those same studies that they want to include it back in the DSM again because of the above mentioned womb/hormone issues that have been discovered. I think there needs to be more studies conducted.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I'm hoping that things in the DSM are included or not included because having the condition is harmful to your self or others.
Except that it's a little more complicated. Something like homosexuality can be harmful to an individual if he's within a social context which will result in him being ostracized or harmed (or imprisoned) as a result. But the DSM and existence of treatment is itself part of the social context and might encourage the harm. Given that homosexuality has no effective 'treatment', putting it in the DSM may have been purely harmful itself even in circumstance in which it fits your definition.
What set me off in the original comment was this idea that it was so easy to determine who these people are.
It's ridiculous on its face. If psychopaths weren't good at fooling people as to what they are, they wouldn't get into those positions of power.
These "biggest assholes" that he mentions may be psychopaths, but they aren't very good psychopaths. They don't do a good job of making people see them as something other than what they are.
And reversible arguments being evidence of psychopathy? Oh please. How many spousal arguments have you witnessed that have reversible arguments (ones that can be used by either side)? Boatloads. Does that mean all or even most of the people using them are psychopaths, or even stand as any evidence of it?
The point isn't about the politicians he uses for examples (he could use Obama and McCain just or many others as well) it's that the reasoning (and I shudder to call it reasoning) he uses is self contradictory
In short, it's bullshit.
I can't speak much to the addiction factor but to say I took myself off ADD meds, but yet have problems quitting smoking. However, I will speak to ADD and amphetamines, a person who truly has ADD, when they take these meds, it mellows them out. This is the opposite effect that people generally take the illegal versions of. When I drink coffee, even too much coffee, it mellows me out, not makes me wide awake or hyper. Many people who attack ADD don't seem to understand, that this is one of the main factors in the "disease" (unsure what else to call it). It may be that ADD is more normal than "normal" people nowadays, but I think it is just over diagnosed, not that there aren't people with a real issue that the prescriptions really help to solve.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?