Signs of Psychopathy May Also Appear in a Person’s Writing

New research by University of Mississippi researchers shows that certain personality traits linked to psychopathy can be reflected in people’s everyday writing.

New research by researchers from the University of Mississippi shows that some personality traits related to psychopathy can be reflected in people's daily writings. For example, people who score higher on some dimensions of these personality traits may use less anxiety-related words or mention more negative consequences when narrating life events.

According to ScienceAlert, psychosis is not registered as an official condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and psychologists and psychiatrists do not use it as an independent diagnosis. However, the term is used, especially in criminology, to describe a set of problematic personality traits.

According to the triple model of psychopathy, these characteristics have three main dimensions: boldness or fearlessness, incompetence and callousness. These dimensions refer to different aspects of personality and are not necessarily seen in the same way in all people. According to researchers, every person may have these characteristics to some extent. The problem becomes more serious when all three dimensions appear with great intensity in a person's personality.

Reflection of psychosis in people's writings

In this study, 307 undergraduate students and 144 people who had a history of incarceration and were selected from the community were examined. The participants first completed the TriPM (TriPM) questionnaire to determine the extent to which they have the three main features of this model.

They were then asked to write about their lives and describe three types of events: the best life event, the worst life event, and a turning point that changed the course of their lives. The researchers examined the writings to find out what the personality traits of the people have to do with the choice of words and the tone of their narration.

Of course, the aim of the research was not to detect psychosis from the writings; Especially since this term is basically not considered an independent official diagnosis. The goal is to examine how traits associated with psychopathy can manifest in normal behavior, including language use.

People who had a higher score in the boldness dimension used less words related to anxiety. Words like "worry", "fear", "panic" and "nervous" are less visible in the writings of these people.

Examining the narratives of people with callousness

In the dimension of callousness, a different pattern was observed. People with higher scores used less words associated with negative emotions when writing about a turning point in their life; Words like "bad", "hate", "hurt" and "tired".

However, the most relationship between personality traits and language was related to the dimension of disinhibition. People who scored higher in this dimension mentioned less positive consequences in all three of their narratives. These people used more negative language when describing their best life event and turning point compared to other participants; But such a difference was not observed in the narration of the worst event in life.

Examining people with obvious signs of incontinence

The findings of this research do not completely agree with the common image of a psychopathic person as a cold, emotionless personality without personal conflicts. The results show that the language of people who have some characteristics related to psychopathy is not necessarily devoid of feelings or personal meaning; However, their way of expressing in some situations may be different from other people's expectations of the appropriate tone for that situation.

The findings of this study have been published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences.