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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.
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
Your relationship with Logic makes me think you met it once at a party, shook its hand to be polite, and then moved on to talk to all the interesting people never giving it a second thought.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
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
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.
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
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
Yeah, I have the feeling trying to talk about this here is a losing battle, because no one seems to know what a psychopath is, but you're correct.
Psychopaths have trouble because they don't actually have any empathy. Psychopaths do not have to kill people, or anything like that. They simply are utterly uncaring about how other people feel in any respect. (And most of them are smart enough to fake otherwise.)
Because they do not understand stuff that is obvious to everyone, they often end up explaining why they did something that was just obvious to everyone.
And this isn't just bad things. Psychopaths often do good things because people are watching, and they know that society says that's what they're 'supposed' to do. But they don't actually think that.
So when you ask them about why they held a door for an old person, their actual reason is 'Because I looked good doing that', but they obviously can't say that, so they'll come up with some sort of reason that doesn't make much sense.
Whereas normal people say, "Uh, because she was having trouble with it, duh."
Normal people automatically act towards each other in a certain way. Even criminals _feel_ that way, even if they ignore it. Psychopaths are doing mostly the same thing, but by rote. They learned the rules and follow them.
For psychopaths, explaining behavior in moral terms is like someone with literally no sense of humor trying to explain jokes. You could study jokes, and why and how they're funny, and laugh at the right places and fool people, but, in the end, if asked to explain, your explanations of any specific joke are distinguishable from people with actual sense of humor, at least with enough analysis.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?