How to spot a Psychopath

Psychopaths have highly persuasive nonverbal behavior that diverts the listener away from being able to identify the psychopathic nature laying behind. However their manipulation only works to a certain extent as their speech can perhaps indicate psychopathy. Psychopaths can easily conceal the truth through being cunning and manipulative however unconsciously their speech patterns can tell a different story. It makes it hard for people such as criminologists, to establish who is and who isn't a psychopath, as they typically use superficial charm and are pathological liars.  

For example when police interview psychopaths who have committed crimes, there is a tendency for them to describe their crimes in past tense rather than in present. This could suggest that they have a psychological detachment from their crimes showing, in most cases, their lack of empathy and emotion, key characteristics of psychopathy. Perhaps using past tense could also suggest their lack of empathy to their crimes as they don't acknowledge the situation in the present time, as they don't have regret of the crimes they have committed. 

Jeffrey Hancock, a communications professor, analyzed the language of 14 psychopathic murderers and 38 killers, who were not diagnosed with psychopathy. He found that emotional abnormalities can manifest in their speech patterns. He found many psychopaths used casual phrases such as the conjunctions "so", "because" and "since", especially in terms of describing crimes they had committed. He suggested that they used these casual phrases as the crimes were a "logical outcome of a plan". Therefore the crimes were a goal they had to achieve. 

The key to concealing psychopathy is trying to convince the listener that you are sane. Therefore psychopaths use a variety of language features to do so. Firstly they use non-fluency features such as hesitations and fillers such as "uh" and "um" to put on a mask of sanity. By the speech not flowing properly, it suggests that they are sane and cannot remember crimes in detail, whereas in reality they can remember everything they have done clearly. Also they use paralinguistic features such as gestures and facial expressions to make it look like they are sane as they are expressing some form of emotion. Whereas if they didn't make gestures or facial expressions it would suggest that they have a lack of emotion.  

Another thing I have noticed, in terms of criminals who have been diagnosed with psychopathy, is that their language is used as power. More so they use instrumental power, which is shown in many police interviews as they become the dominant participant in the conversations. This means to gain the power and control, they lead the conversation, set the agenda and control the topics that are discussed. This can be illustrated using Fairclough's theory that interactions are 'unequal encounters' and that language choice is created and constrained by certain social 'power' situations, as psychopaths can create power imbalances. 

Kayleigh Morgan