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Analyzing Tweets To Identify Psychopaths

Posted by timothy on from the except-ones-who-know-of-the-model dept.

nonprofiteer writes "Researchers presenting at Defcon next week have developed a psychopathy prediction model for Twitter. It analyzes linguistic tells to rate users' levels of narcissism, machiavellianism and other similarities to Patrick Bateman. 'The FBI could use this to flag potential wrongdoers, but I think it's much more compelling for psychologists to use to understand large communities of people,' says Chris Sumner of the Online Privacy Foundation. Some of the Twitter clues: Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word "hate." Using the word "we." Using periods. Using filler words such as 'blah' and 'I mean' and 'um.' So, um, yeah."

12 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. There's a rumor going around by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hear that if you measure their skulls you can also spot murderers. I will call this science phrenology!

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    1. Re:There's a rumor going around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This article is absolutely ridiculous and I pray it is shot down my mainstream psychologists because it's not fair at all. I am a law-abiding citizen who works a full-time job and spends much of my downtime educating myself and hanging out with friends. I have hobbies, I have a beautiful family, and I am a very good person. Many of the things in this article have applied to me throughout my life and I am disgusted that they would even begin their psychopath search in this manner.

      Fucking incredible.

    2. Re:There's a rumor going around by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, this system tries to predict the future by reading posts on twitter. Could a certain percentage of people who commit violent crime share the common trait of psychopathy? Certainly. Do all? No. In fact, a rather large percentage of the population are psychopathic, yet lead normal, non-violent lives. Far more people that are not psychopathic commit crimes than those with psychopathy.

      The end result of this research is rather clear: Watch what you say on the internet, the FBI might flag you. And that's a far more dangerous threat than a few psychopaths walking around. If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while.

    3. Re:There's a rumor going around by fatphil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Do all? No.

      That's actually not the failure that makes this useless. The failure is that the dangerous psychos are such a small minority of the population that even if you throw away 99% (and I'm being generous) of the relatively normals, you're still left with a huge pool of normals with just a few pschos in it. You've not made the problem of actually finding the psychos significantly easier. Now 99.99% of the people who seem suspicious are dangerous rather than 99.9999%.

      This is exactly the same flaw as the face scanner tech they were proposing at airports which Bruce Schneier et al. ripped to pieces when it was first proposed.

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    4. Re:There's a rumor going around by AngryDeuce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But how many people have an online persona that is vastly different than they're real life one? I have friends that act like they're Che Guevara on their social media postings that, in real life, will bitch and cry and complain for an hour if the person at Starbucks takes too long to prepare their non-fat mochaccinolatte, and don't even get me started on all the people that bitch and complain about "freeloaders" and "people living on the government teat" that I know for a fact are collecting government services themselves or have benefited from them in the past....that's another particularly LOL-worthy demographic these days. And then, of course, there's the "I'm ME and I don't care if anyone likes my opinions or not!" posts I used to see all the time, written by people that are, without a hint of irony, obviously searching for positive reinforcement from their social group.

      The number of people I know that are actually 'themselves' on the internet, and not some idealized version of themselves that they invented to be popular, is quite slim. I don't bother with social media anymore because I got tired of dealing with cartoon characters and hypocrites. If people actually had to be themselves on the internet, warts and all, I bet the number of social media junkies out there would plummet overnight...

      For those reasons, I fail to see the value in this...

    5. Re:There's a rumor going around by LaminatorX · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most psychopaths are simply called "Boss."

    6. Re:There's a rumor going around by s.petry · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most psychopaths are not dangerous, the desire for a so called pseudo-science of trying to cure something obviously not broken is odd. Just like most people have some type of phobia, have narcissistic tendencies, some type of rational paranoia, etc... We don't run around trying to make magic bullets trying to fix it all for several reasons.

      First, most of those traits are healthy and responses to the environment. Second, most people do not experience those tendencies for extended durations of time. If the environment is messed up, so are the people.. it's called a coping mechanism. Trying to fix the "problem" without really fixing the problem is something us humans have an extremely poor habit of doing, and the results are often much worse than working on the root cause (environment, education, social influences, etc...)

      Instead of trying to fix symptoms, we should be trying to fix the problems...

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    7. Re:There's a rumor going around by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Now 99.99% of the people who seem suspicious are dangerous rather than 99.9999%.

      If the suspect pool is the general public, then cutting it down by 99% still leaves way too many people. But what if the suspect pool is much smaller? What if there is a serial rapist in a town of 5000? You can use this test to cut the suspect pool down to 50. Of those 50, 20 are female, another 15 have solid alibis, 10 don't fit the description. Of the remaining five, three agree to voluntary DNA testing to eliminate themselves from the suspect list. Does this mean that one of the remaining two did it? Of course not, but focusing some resources on investigating them might be a better option than checking out the other 4950.

      I am not claiming that this test actually works. I am just pointing out that a test that is wrong 99% of the time can still be useful under some circumstances.

  2. Using Periods? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bullshit. Using periods is simply properly using the English language. (And expletives have their proper place as well--although this one is more ironic than angry :) )

  3. Really? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ability to predict psychopaths in under 140 characters? What have all these mental health professionals been doing? All these face-to-face interviews, "sessions" and observations. Maybe if they submitted their reports in only 140 characters they would have figured all this out a long time ago. /sarcasm

    1. Re:Really? by reub2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Probably is bullshit. The twitter responses where compared to a survey. In other words they calibrated their instrument by simply asking people if they're a psychopath. Lets see, one of the most well known trait of psychopaths is their tendency to lie.

  4. So, basically, speaking English. by Arancaytar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some of the Twitter clues: Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word "hate." Using the word "we." Using periods. Using filler words such as 'blah' and 'I mean' and 'um.

    Speaking English either formally or informally and either without emotion or with emotion. I have also heard that almost all of them breathed regularly and wore clothing. Those are relevant clues that might help recognize the next one early.

    On the other hand, that they all owned assault weapons is purely a coincidence.