Annals of Psychology: Research on Group Differences in the Crime Narratives of Psychopathic Murderers

Posted: October 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, psychology | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Gary and Judith Ridgeway

Thanks to Delphyne for sending me a link to this article about a study of the crime narratives of psychopaths. Unfortunately, since the journal article was just published in September, I haven’t been able to read the whole thing yet. It’s a study of speech patterns and word usage in the crime narratives of 14 psychopathic killers, compared to 38 murderers who were not categorized as psychopaths, carried out by Jeffrey T. Hancock of Cornell University and Michael T. Woodworth and Stephen Porter of the University of British Columbia.

Please forgive a brief personal digression here. I have been interested in narrative analysis since I took an introductory course in research methods about 16 years ago. My professor in that course was one of the leaders in the study of children’s narratives and narrative development. I was amazed that someone could be a psychologist and study stories, and my imagination was immediately captured by the idea. As an undergraduate, under supervision from this professor, I analyzed the writings of novelist Jack Kerouac, and found a fascinating pattern in his work. In every book he wrote, Kerouac recreated a traumatic scene from his childhood in many different guises.

Kerouac’s 9-year-old brother Gerard, whom he adored, had died when Jack was only four. Shortly before Gerard died, Jack had knocked over a structure that Gerard was building with his erector set, and Gerard had gotten very angry and yelled at Jack to go away. That was the last interaction that Jack remembered with Gerard before he died. From a child’s point of view it seemed that these two events–knocking over the structure and getting yelled at and Gerard’s death were linked. Young Jack felt that his bad behavior had caused Gerard’s death. This was extremely traumatic for a young child, and the scene became a part of Kerouac’s vision of the world and his interpretation of interpersonal experiences. Such traumatic repetition is not unusual in creative works. It happens with writers, painters, and musicians. Freud called it sublimation.

In graduate school, I interviewed children for a study of narrative and personality. I later wrote my dissertation on children’s use of a specific aspect of narrative structure called “evaluation.” Evaluation refers to any parts of the narrative that are not necessary to straightforwardly convey “what happened.” When someone adds emotion or description to a story or uses words like “very,” “really,” or “a lot” to add emphasis, that is evaluation–the narrator adds personal reactions to the events in the story.

The narrative form is inherent to the way humans think. Narrative is the basis for autobiographical memories, and it very likely reflects aspects of personality. In my opinion, personality is likely to be correlated with individual differences in the use evaluation in stories.

The study by Hancock and colleagues that I mentioned above was based on computerized textual analysis of personal crime narratives–basically personal stories like the ones I have studied in both children and adults. Here is a summary of the results (emphasis added):

The words of psychopathic murderers match their personalities, which reflect selfishness, detachment from their crimes and emotional flatness, says Jeff Hancock, of Cornell University, and colleagues Michael Woodworth and Stephen Porter at the University of British Columbia….

Hancock and his colleagues analyzed stories told by the murderers and compared them with 38 convicted murderers who were not diagnosed as psychopathic. Each subject was asked to describe his crime in detail. Their stories were taped, transcribed and subjected to computer analysis.

Psychopaths used more conjunctions like because, since or so that, implying that the crime had to be done to obtain a particular goal. They used twice as many words relating to physical needs, such as food, sex or money, while non-psychopaths used more words about social needs, including family, religion and spirituality.

Unveiling their predatory nature in their own description, the psychopaths often included details of what they had to eat on the day of their crime.

Psychopaths were more likely to use the past tense, suggesting a detachment from their crimes, say the researchers. They tended to be less fluent in their speech, using more ums and uhs. The exact reason for this is not clear, but the researchers speculate that the psychopath is trying harder to make a positive impression, needing to use more mental effort to frame the story.

The primary purpose of this study was to demonstrate that the language patters could be identified using automated software rather than human coders. According to Hancock, his findings provide support for previous studies of the language of psychopaths. I can’t wait to get my hands on the full article so I can look at his sources. I hope the paper includes an explanation of the coding system and examples of narratives.

Based on the brief descriptions of the study that I’ve seen so far, the differences that were found between the narratives of psychopathic and non-psychopathic murderers could mostly be classified as differences in the use of narrative evaluation, which I described above. Evaluation includes causal words and emotion words. I assume that the researchers programmed the software to count causal and emotional words and phrases as well as words and phrases that referred to social needs–also examples of evaluation.

The differences in fluency could also be classified as differences in narrative structure. Differences in narrative structure, including evaluation,  have been found in comparisons of children from different cultures and comparisons of children with developmental disorders such as ADHD, autism, and Williams syndrome.

Of course there are many limitations to this study. The authors suggest that their findings could be used to identify psychopaths, but I’d think it could only be used to distinguish between groups–not to diagnose individuals.

Whenever a story on research results is published in the media, people start to generalize the results in all sorts of inappropriate ways. For example, just because someone uses a lot of “uhs,” and “ums” in their speech, doesn’t make him or her a psychopath. I’d be really concerned if police departments tried to use the automated language analysis software to evaluate criminals.

I found some quotes from Gary Ridgeway’s confessions on-line. Ridgeway (pictured at the top of this post) is also known as the Green River killer. He has so far confessed to murdering nearly 50 women.  I believe his confessions are even posted on You Tube. Here are some examples of his descriptions of his crimes. Keep in mind that a narrative is defined as two statements about the past that are temporally related.

Question: “How did you kill her?”
Ridgway: “I choked her, with my arm. One or two I choked with a towel.”

He doesn’t express any emotion toward the victims other than his own hatred and rage.

“All the women I killed them ’cause I wanted and it was hate, hated them,” he said….”They were just pieces of trash to me. They were garbage,” he said.

When he talked about his own motivations, he included information about his emotions.

“I had control when I killed the women. I got my rage out for the time,” he said. “I did cry, yes I did, and that was the good part of me. I cried, but I still killed them and didn’t care anything about them.”

So Ridgeway’s “emotional flatness” was expressed in relation to his victims, but he describes himself as experiencing strong emotions. His problem is not understanding that other people also experience the same kinds of emotions. His lack of empathy allowed him to treat his victims as objects rather than feeling human beings.

If I were doing a follow-up to Hancock’s study, I would try to find a larger sample of psychopaths, including both males and females. I would specifically at expressions of emotion and note whether the words referred to the narrator or to other people. Since psychopaths are deficient in empathy, I would expect to find that they express more emotion in their narratives when talking about their own feelings than in references to the feelings of other people.

Saturday Night with the Stupids

Posted: October 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

I know that title is kind of harsh, but I’m beginning to lose my patience with the Republican candidates for President. How on earth can anyone even consider voting for one of these people? Just looking quickly at the headlines on Google, I was able to find multiple examples of complete idiocy from Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain.

Today Rick Perry went pheasant hunting in northern Iowa and was quoted as saying that he has had a “long love affair with guns.”

“As long as I’ve got memory, I had something to go hunting with,” Perry told a small gaggle of reporters at the Loess Hills Hunting Preserve. “It was a long love affair with a boy and his gun that turned into a man and his gun, and then it turned into a man and his son and his daughter and their guns.”

Look, I have nothing against hunting. My grandfather used to go pheasant hunting in North Dakota every year, and we enjoyed eating what he brought back. But I can’t imagine my grandfather ever talking about loving his guns. That’s just sick.

The Boston Globe noted that Perry seemed a lot more comfortable holding a gun than performing on the debate stage. And he wants to make it easy for everyone to become a gun-lover.

As governor, Perry supported legislation that made it easier for Texans to pay for a concealed handgun license, and a bill to let them keep their concealed handgun licenses for five years instead of four. He helped cut agreements with other states to let Texans carry their concealed handguns outside the state.

Perry has his own concealed handgun license — and regularly carries one, once famously shooting a coyote that was threatening his daughter’s Labrador retriever while out on a jog. The gun company, Ruger, has a special version of its .380 in Perry’s honor: the True Texan Coyote Special.

And where it comes to guns, Perry has plenty of the same aggressive bravado he’s displayed on the debate stage. He sent a video introduction to the National Rifle Association Convention that featured him shooting a rifle and calling himself “a believer in the notion that gun control is hitting what you’re aiming at.” (He’s also said it’s “use both hands.”)

Something tells me if Perry ever got elected, he’d get worse treatment from the Villagers than Carter or Clinton did. He comes across as the consummate hillbilly (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with being a hillbilly).

Perry also announced his “economic plan” today, and it’s going to drive Dakinikat nuts.

Rick Perry previewed the economic plan he will roll out on Tuesday, saying he would call for trashing the current tax code and replacing it with a flat tax, ending all earmarks, enacting a balanced budget amendment and reforming entitlements.

“It’s time to get Washington out of the way in order for us to preserve the American way,” Perry said. “The American people may be bruised but they’re not broken and they want a new president who can deliver the hope and change that this one that we have today promised.”

It sounds pretty changy, but not very hopey, if you ask me. Perry also had this to say about women’s reproductive rights:

Maintaining the U.S. moral authority in the world begins with preventing abortion and protecting “innocent and vulnerable unborn children,” Perry said.

For that reason, government must take an active role in legislating restrictions on the procedure, he said.

Really? The country’s “moral authority” depends on controlling women’s bodies? What about torture, war, summary assassinations, and government corruption? I guess those are all “moral.”

Next up, Michele Bachmann. A couple of days ago, her entire New Hampshire staff quit, and she didn’t even know it.

According to POLITICO and WUMR, Bachmann’s entire New Hampshire staff jumped ship, partly because they hadn’t been paid in a month. That story seemed to make sense, considering the severe fundraising shortfalls in the Bachmann camp and growing dissatisfaction with her as a candidate.

However, Bachmann released a statement about her New Hampshire staff, saying, “That is a shocking story to me… I don’t know where this came from, but we’ve made call and it’s certainly not true.” Well, if she’s made calls, then certainly we must believe her! There’s no way Michele Bachmann could be so incredibly wrong about the status of her own campaign!

….According to Jeff Chidester, who is either Bachmann’s current New Hampshire campaign director if you believe Michele, or her former campaign director if you believe Jeff, “The New Hampshire team has quit.” When asked about Michele’s statement that they were still working for her, Chidester added, “I’m sorry the national team is confused. They shouldn’t be.”

Sigh…

But Herman Cain has to be the stupidest of these three. He amazed everyone by going on CNN and, in so many words, declaring himself pro-choice. Now he’s trying to walk that back, and not doing a very good job of it. Here his is on Fox News sounding completely confused. This guy has no understanding of any issue–even the ones most near and dear to his wingnut fans.

He said, She said … “literally”

Posted: October 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

So, I’m sitting in the Denver Airport plugged into the free wifi and recharging batteries. I have two hours worth of sitting left.  The only eventful thing today was watching an up armored vehicle speed down the street in front of the Brown Palace towards the Capitol area.  There were also three people in zombie outfits and make up standing on the corner.  For awhile, I was thinking I should check for a Bourbon Street sign but the 16th street walking mall was just to my left and the Rocky Mountains were still behind me.  It was Denver alright. There was a huge occupy march this afternoon and a simultaneous Zombie festival.  I was wondering if they could merge the two and the zombies could play big banks.  The riot police just seemed to be buzzing the parade of maybe 500 or so folks.

Anyway, I’m trying to find something to post and run across the NYT article on Condoleeza Rice and an interesting thing about zombie vice president Dick Cheney.  I guess she is still miffed about his portrayal of her teary eyed jag in his memoir and shot back.

First as national security adviser and later as secretary of state, Ms. Rice often argued against the hard-line approach that Mr. Cheney and others advanced. The vice president’s staff was “very much of one ultra-hawkish mind,” she writes, adding that the most intense confrontation between her and Mr. Cheney came when she argued that terrorism suspects could not be “disappeared” as in some authoritarian states.

In November 2001, she writes, she went to President George W. Bush upon learning that he had issued an order prepared by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, authorizing military commissions without telling her. “If this happens again,” she told the president, “either Al Gonzales or I will have to resign.”

Mr. Bush apologized. She writes that it was not his fault and that she felt that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Cheney’s staff had not served the president well.

Ms. Rice’s book, “No Higher Honor,” was obtained by The New York Times in advance of its Nov. 1 publication by Crown Publishing, a division of Random House. It is the latest in a string of memoirs emerging from Bush administration figures trying to define the history of their tenure.

Again, you may recall that Rice responded to Dick Cheney rather harshly last month.

Condoleezza Rice is hitting back at Dick Cheney for what she’s calling an “attack on my integrity” in the former vice president’s new memoir.

In his tell-all book, Cheney blasts the ex-Secretary of State’s handling of nuclear negotiations with North Korea and argues she misled then-President George W. Bush.

“I kept the president fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans,” Rice told Reuters on Wednesday.

“You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president. You know, I don’t appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies.”

Since Rice’s memoir follows both Rumsfeld and Cheney’s, it remains to be seen who will get the last dig.

It’s Saturday!

Posted: October 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Politics, morning reads, Republican politics, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 33 Comments

Happy Saturday Sky Dancers!! It’s a beautiful fall day here in Indiana, but I’m looking forward to getting back to Boston. I’ll be taking off in a couple of days and I hope to be home by Tuesday or Wednesday. My mom is going along for the ride so she can hang out with her youngest grandsons for awhile. It will be fun, because she’ll be there over Halloween. But enough about my boring life–let’s get to the news.

This story is a couple of days old, but still worth reading. Via BDBlue at Corrente, Which GOP candidate do you think has raised the most money from Wall Street?

Barack Obama!

Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data.

Obama’s key advantage over the GOP field is the ability to collect bigger checks because he raises money for both his own campaign committee and for the Democratic National Committee, which will aid in his reelection effort.

As a result, Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. The numbers show that Obama retains a persistent reservoir of support among Democratic financiers who have backed him since he was an underdog presidential candidate four years ago.

And get this–Obama has raised nearly twice as much as Romney from the Mittster’s old firm, Bain Capital! So don’t believe all those stories in the media about the Wall Street titans switching to Mitt.

Here’s another “breaking news” story from Forbes: US Businesses Not Being Strangled By Regulation And Taxation, World Bank Says. Gee, no kidding? But the Republicans say that’s the main cause of our economic problems, don’t they?

The World Bank uses indicators such as time spent to set up a business to getting credit, among other things, in benchmarking the 183 countries it ranks in “Doing Business”. The report measures and tracks changes in the regulations applied to domestic companies in 11 areas in their life cycle–such as investors rights, taxation, cross border transactions, legality and enforcement of contracts and bankruptcy law. A fundamental premise of doing business is that economic activity requires good rules that are transparent and accessible to all, not just big business. Such regulations should be efficient, the World Bank states, striking a balance between safeguarding some important aspects of the business environment and avoiding distortions that impose unreasonable costs on businesses. “Where business regulation is burdensome and competition limited, success depends more on whom you know than on what you can do. But where regulations are relatively easy to comply with and accessible to all who need to use them, anyone with talent and a good idea should be able to start and grow a business (legally),” the World Bank said.

Where does the supposed regulation and taxation crippled U.S. stand in the rankings? It is number four, trailing behind New Zealand (3), Hong Kong (2) and Singapore (1).

What it looks like from the research desks at one of the most powerful and elite multilateral institutions on the planet is a U.S. that does not have the government in its way, but a U.S. whose government is more out of the way than it is in every other major economy on earth, including mainland China.

Wow, I wonder if Congressman Paul Ryan reads Forbes? Naaaah… probably too far left for him. And speaking of Ryan, he appeared at a town hall meeting in Muskego, WI yesterday and made a complete ass of himself as usual. From Think Progress:

During a town hall today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) was asked by Matthew Lowe, a student, why the GOP wants to cut Pell Grants. Ryan responded by saying that the program is “unsustainable,” before telling Lowe that he should be working three jobs and taking out student loans to pay for college, instead of using Pell Grants:

LOWE: I come from a very middle-class family and under President Obama, I get $5,500 per year to pay for school, which doesn’t come close to covering all of the funding, but it helps ease the burden. Under your plan, you cut it by 15 percent. I was just curious why you would cut a grant that goes directly to the middle- and lower-class people that need it the most.

RYAN: ‘Cause Pell Grants have become unsustainable. It’s all borrowed money…Look, I worked three jobs to pay off my student loans after college. I didn’t get grants, I got loans, and we need to have a system of viable student loans to be able to do this.

That’s funny. I read that Ryan used his father’s Social Security survivor benefits to put himself through college. I’d like to see some documentation on those three jobs he claims he worked while attending classes, writing papers, and studying for exams. Besides, I’ll bet the unemployment rate for college-age kids wasn’t at depression levels back then.

And speaking of paying for college, here’s an interesting piece at Truthout by Ellen Brown: Can the Fed Prevent the Next Crisis by Eliminating Interest on Student Loan Debt?

Among the demands of the Wall Street protesters is student debt forgiveness – a debt “jubilee.” Occupy Philly has a “Student Loan Jubilee Working Group,” and other groups are studying the issue. Commentators say debt forgiveness is impossible. Who would foot the bill? But there is one deep pocket that could pull it off – the Federal Reserve. In its first quantitative easing program (QE1), the Fed removed $1.3 trillion in toxic assets from the books of Wall Street banks. For QE4, it could remove $1 trillion in toxic debt from the backs of millions of students.

The economy would only be the better for it, as was shown by the GI Bill, which provided virtually free higher education for returning veterans, along with low-interest loans for housing and business. The GI Bill had a sevenfold return. It was one of the best investments Congress ever made.

There are arguments against a complete student debt write-off, including that it would reward private universities that are already charging too much and it would unfairly exclude other forms of debt from relief. But the point here is that it could be done and it (or some similar form of consumer “jubilee”) would represent a significant stimulus to the economy.

According to Brown, student loan debt is “the next Black Swan.”

Here’s another stupid Republican story for you. Eric Cantor was scheduled to give a speech yesterday at the elite Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Cantor was to speak on what Republicans plan to do about income inequality. The school was so excited that they opened the talk to the public. In addition, there was to be a protest by several groups, including Occupy Philly.

Guess what Cantor did? He wimped out and cancelled. ROFLOL! From the LA Times:

Cantor was scheduled to speak on income inequity at a lecture hosted by the Wharton business school. The Virginia Republican’s office said he called off the speech after learning that protesters planned to rally outside and attendance would not be limited to students and others affiliated with the school.

Ron Ozio, director of media relations at University of Pennsylvania, said the business school “deeply regrets” that the event was canceled.

“The university community was looking forward to hearing Majority Leader Cantor’s comments on important public issues, and we hope there will be another opportunity for him to speak on campus,” Ozio said in a statement. “The Wharton speaker series is typically open to the general public, and that is how the event with Majority Leader Cantor was billed. We very much regret if there was any misunderstanding with the Majority Leader’s office on the staging of his presentation.”

This is pretty disgusting: Libyans line up to see Gaddafi’s body on display; groups call for probe into death

International human rights groups called Friday for an investigation into the death of former Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi as gory new videos showed him being spat at and punched by revolutionaries and as skepticism mounted about official claims that he was shot in crossfire after being captured.

The new cellphone videos cast a shadow over the revolutionaries even as they were celebrating the end of their eight-month struggle to wrest control of the country. NATO had backed the rebels in the name of shielding pro-democracy civilians from Gaddafi’s brutality.

“The government version certainly does not fit with the reality we have seen on the ground,” said Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, who has been investigating the capture of Gaddafi in his home town of Sirte. Amnesty International warned that the killing could be a war crime.

Why do I suspect the U.S. Government gave the go-ahead for Gaddafi to be executed, just like Osama bin Laden? You might want to read Joseph Cannon’s take on this one.

Finally, late last night the Volker Rule was number 1 in Google’s top stories. From the NYT:

When Paul Volcker called for new rules in 2009 to curb risk-taking by banks, and thus avoid making taxpayers liable in the future for the kind of reckless speculation that caused the financial crisis and resulting bailout, he outlined his proposal in a three-page letter to the president.

Last year, when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act went to Congress, the Volcker Rule that it contained took up 10 pages.

Last week, when the proposed regulations for the Volcker Rule finally emerged for public comment, the text had swelled to 298 pages and was accompanied by more than 1,300 questions about 400 topics.

Wall Street firms have spent countless millions of dollars trying to water down the original Volcker proposal and have succeeded in inserting numerous exemptions. Now they’re claiming it’s too complex to understand and too costly to adopt.

Gee, what a surprise. I wonder how many of those millions were taxpayer dollars?

So…what are you reading and blogging about today?

Live Blogging Janet Yellen

Posted: October 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Live | Tags: , | 3 Comments

I am absolutely thrilled to be preparing to bring my live blog of former FRB SF President Jane Yellen who is one of the most significant women leaders in economics and finance of our time.  Dr. Yellen was the Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors under President Bill Clinton. She is currently the Vice Chairman of the Fed system.
She’s speaking at the Financial Management Association conference today in Denver.  She is receiving the outstanding Financial Executive Award.

She notes that the recovery is disappointing.  She plans to discuss monetary and fiscal policies that can help the US economy.  She is mentioning that the recovery has improved things since the worst of the recession. But, she still says the economy is less vigorous than desirable.  Recent data says the recession was deeper than thought.

She believes that the temporary factors from the Japanese tsunami that disrupted the auto industry and high gas prices have moderated.  She believes that the restricted access to credit, consumer sentiment, and weak consumer spending is creating  concern among business people.  This has made businesses reluctant to expand their operations.  The housing sector continues to depress the economy.  The housing sector has historically played an important role in improving economic conditions.  This is not happening this time.  There are a lot of factors causing this.

Yellen believes that states are also playing a role in restraining the pace of recovery.  She’s believes that the path of fiscal policy is weighing on both household and business confidence.  The one bright sector in the US economy has been exports but this is not going to continue.  She believes this is due to both the EU situation and the slow down in developing nations’ economies.

She says that financial markets are experiencing unusual volatility which is putting pressure on financial institutions and investors.  The US economy as well as slow growth abroad is part of this.  Also, the EU situation is troubling markets.  She believes that the political considerations in trying to develop and implement solutions to the EU problem is creating stress.  She thinks this could cause a retightening of credit conditions and could impact US financial institutions.  She believes that also the deterioration of the US economic outlook could put stress on banks too.

Yellen is now talking about the outlook for inflation.  She believes that any recent inflation was due to oil and other commodity prices being volatile, and also due to the Japanese earthquake and that inflation will moderate.  She believes that the target inflation rate will be attained.  She believes also that long term inflation expectations remain stable and is more concerned with disinflation or deflation.  She thinks that the risk of that is much higher.

Yellen is speaking now to the dual mandate of the Fed and monetary policy.  She is giving some background on the zero bound policy.  (She’s on the FOMC, btw.)  She’s also speaking to the importance of fomc clarification on monetary policy and the role they have reassuring the market they will keep interest rates low given the current conditions of subdued output.  She is also talking about how a communicated target rate based on employment or inflation might give the market more confidence on the stability of the low targeted fed funds rate.

She expects that unemployment and the economy will improve even though there are significant downside risks.  She says the FOMC is watching things carefully and will use tools as appropriate.

She is now taking questions from the floor.  The first one is basically about the give and take between signals to and from the market and the FOMC on setting market expectations for inflation.

Okay, I need to go prepare to present something so I’m leaving you with this now. Hopefully, this will give you some insight into the FOMC.

Take care

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