Researchers Study How Psychopathic Traits Shape Language

University of Mississippi psychologists studied hundreds of autobiographical essays and found that the three traits often used as a framework to understand psychopathy – boldness, meanness and disinhibition – were linked to different patterns in language. The researchers published their findings in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

"The goal here is not to diagnose psychopathy based on language," said Ky Bray, an Ole Miss doctoral candidate in psychology. "It's to point to the fact that psychopathy shows up in everyday behaviors, even subtle behaviors like language.

"If we want to understand psychopathy and the different traits that comprise it, we need to think creatively about how these traits shape social interaction."

The three traits used to understand and assess the pathology are called the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy. They can influence everyday actions and behaviors, such as the way a person talks about themselves, said Laura Drislane, assistant professor of psychology.

The research surveyed 450 participants, including college students and people who reported prior incarceration. Drislane and Bray first asked participants to answer open-ended questions about their life's high, low and turning points. Then participants filled out a survey to measure their psychopathic traits.

The researchers used text-analysis software to examine how often participants used words associated with categories such as positive tone, negative tone, achievement, clout and risk.

They found that people scoring higher in disinhibition were more likely to use negative words and less likely to reference friends, use positive words or use words related to achievement. Higher meanness was associated with more positive tone and more achievement and reward-related language, with less negative emotional language.

People scoring higher in boldness used fewer words related to anxiety – such as fear, afraid or worry – and made fewer references to mental illness.

"What this tells us is the story we tell about our life has meaning," Drislane said. "It helps people make sense of their experiences, develop a worldview and a coherent sense of who they are.

"What we're starting to see is that in psychopathy, there are traits that relate to differences in meaning-making and the ways people think about their life."

The associations in word choice and trait were also dependent on which narrative question the participants were answering, indicating that psychopathic language is not hollow or lacking in emotion as often depicted; rather, it is context- and trait-dependent.

"People tend to think of psychopathy as one thing, but it's actually multidimensional," Bray said. "What we mean when we say that is everyone exists on this spectrum. Everyone has some degree of meanness, boldness and disinhibition.

"Viewing it from a multidimensional perspective allows us to observe how those traits might manifest in nonforensic populations, in people who have not committed a crime. That allows us to see how these traits affect college students, business professionals or interpersonal relationships."

Like many personality pathologies, psychopathy exists on a spectrum, with the common conception of a "psychopath" on one end and a person scoring low in boldness, meanness and disinhibition on the other.

"That's in part why there's a movement away from calling people 'psychopaths,' because we don't view psychopathy as a category," Drislane said. "But psychopathic dimensions can predict important outcomes, things like crime, recidivism or intimate partner violence.

"What our research, including this paper, suggests is that it's important to look beyond that label and into the different components or dimensions of psychopathy, because each of those dimensions actually has a unique set of outcomes or things that it can predicts."

Also, like many mental conditions, psychopathy can be treated to minimize symptoms.

"If we want to be able to treat or ideally even prevent psychopathy from developing, we need to understand the mechanisms at play," she said. "That comes down to understanding the unique contributors for all three of these dimensions."

Top: Subtle differences in how people talk about their lives and experiences can reveal tendencies toward psychopathy. Ole Miss psychologists are studying responses from 450 people to understand how psychopathic traits such as meanness, boldness and disinhibition show up in everyday language. Graphic by Sarah Tewolde/University Marketing and Communications