Experts have identified signs of psychopathy in the written speech of a person

The term "psychopathy" is widely used, especially in criminology, to describe a problematic set of personality traits. According to the triarchic model, psychopathic individuals have three key traits: courage, disinhibition, and meanness. A new study by clinical psychology researchers Kai Bray and Laura Drislane shows that these traits can manifest in people’s letters in a way that doesn’t always fit our stereotype of “psychopaths.”.

“People tend to think of psychopathy as one thing, but it’s actually multifaceted,” Bray said. Everyone has these traits to some degree. It is when they emerge together, at high levels across the board, that the situation can become grim.”.

Bray and Drislane recruited 307 undergraduate students and 144 former inmates from the local community, each of whom completed a questionnaire (a measure of triarchic psychopathy) designed to assess the levels of three psychopathic personality traits. They were also asked to write about their lives, describing their ups, downs and turning points.

“Looking at psychopathy from a multidimensional perspective allows us to observe how these traits can manifest in people who are not forensics, in people who have not committed crimes,” Bray said. This allows us to see how these traits affect college students, business professionals, or interpersonal relationships.

The results show that the language used by people with psychopathic traits is not necessarily devoid of emotion or personal meaning, which contradicts the stereotype of a cold, heartless criminal, but this does not always match what other people would find appropriate in a given context.

“If we want to be able to treat or, ideally, even prevent the development of psychopathy, we need to understand the mechanisms at work,” Drislein said. It comes down to understanding the unique actors contributing to all three of these aspects.