Quickie: Are You Dating a Psychopath?
Research shows language will leave clues
Are you dating a psychopath? According to a study conducted by researcher Jeff Hancock, you can possibly spot a psychopath by the way they use language.
In order to explore how, Hancock interviewed convicted murderers who had been diagnosed as psychopathic. During the study, Hancock and his colleagues asked 14 psychopathic murderers and 38 non-psychopathic murderers to describe their crimes in detail. What the researchers found was that there were indeed differences in the way these groups of killers used language.
“The psychopath’s world view is fundamentally different….”
Hancock found that psychopaths often talked about their physical needs — for things such as sex, food, or money — when they discussed their crimes, while non-psychopaths were more concerned about their social needs. When non-psychopaths described what they had done, they were more likely to discuss things like family and spiritual needs.
In addition, psychopaths used language that suggested their crimes were committed to achieve a specific goal. When doing that, they used words like “because,” “since,” and “so that.” They also used the past tense a lot, which displayed emotional detachment from the crimes…
