interesting articule, it is amazing how the various fields of psychology have worked towards a better understanding of the human mind, in this case fo rthe specific purpose of criminology.

Whoa. That’s kinda cool and scary. I wouldn’t want police officers stalking my FB, but if it’ll keep me safe…I guess it couldn’t really hurt.

Ya psychopaths creeps me out, now I know what i’ll be looking for!!

Uhh… Hmmmm… This post is so-so.

Words and language is important to us just as it is, but the simple act of analyzing the way a person speaks working as a crime fighting technique? Simply ingenious! As for the innocent people, this may add a little pressure on how to speak for the future. People with disabilities and accents may be considered criminal just because the way the speak.

There might be some merit to this but what about people raised by psychopaths? Even if they weren’t psychopathic themselves, might they not adopt some of the speech patterns? Also, it was rumored that psychopaths talk about logical outcomes of their crimes more often than non-psychopaths an that convicted criminals who are not “psychopaths” tendto speak of religion and their own guilt more often. If someone is an atheist, right off the bat they aren’t going to be talking about religion (unless they know their audience is religious and are telling the audience what they want to hear, which is manipulative) and some people are less inclined to talk about feelings that bother them (sadness, anger, guilt, etc). I am interested, when it comes to causal phrases like “so” and “because” how many individuals who feel the need to be very precise use those phrases more often, or those that feel that their actions may be misunderstood. I have also been curious for a long time whether certain crimes are commited by certain members of the Myers-Brigg spectrum. Extroverts are already the majorit of the population at 70% and in my experience more people tend to be sensory, feeling and judging types than the alternatives. If the clinician administering the test is a religious ESFJ studying an atheist INTP how will that affect the outcome? Signs of psychopathy generally include grandiosity, glibness, deceitul speech and actions, etc… but what about the reserved, taciturn types that rank on pencil and paper tests as more psychopathic? Is their lack of speech and emotionality interpreted then as apathy and indifference or shyness (I am betting the former)? In order for the social sciences to seem like anything more than hokum many other factors need to be analyzed for any of this to have merit. The clinicians produce the reports on the “psychopaths” but how objective are they? What are their previous biases? Does the psychopath in question in case x remind the clinician of the schooll bully who tormented him or her daily in high school? Until human beings can remain completely objective and detached I can’t take much of this seriously. Incidentally, some of the most condecending, glib and self-important people I have ever met have had jobs in the “social sciences”.

People like this have a “blotted” conscious, unable to justify what is right or wrong. They’re handicapped internally.

Weird, I came on thesaurus.com to look up another word for “people” for my paper about psychopaths…

Hmm… I might have to register some of my friends in the psychopath ward!

ummmm what does linguistic mean?

Weird… and very interesting! Amazing that just listening to the choice of words can help you to figure out someone’s personality. Good read!

great, another way to make some people feel more alone

what does this have to do with my homework

I use “so….” and “uh”/”um” more than the average speaker. I thought that it was because I am an introverted engineer that needs a lot of time to phrase my ideas. Maybe I’m an introverted psychopathic engineer?

I think it is a great subject to go into but the human’s mind is too vast and possibilites too grand to actually pin point the patterns of a psychopath. To be a psychopath there lack the emotional attachment, as you’ve said, but the other reasonings of response are very much debatable.

Interesting. Maybe we can find some useful knowledge about criminal minds and emotions from their nomenclature.

So, this was an umm… interesting read, because I learned something all for me.

Everyone says these phrases in everyday conversations. This is not a pragmatic process of identification

We aren’t supposed to call little people “midgets,” we aren’t supposed to call Native Americans “Indians” (though I know individuals who prefer it), and we never, ever call the mentally disabled “retarded.” But we are allowed to say the word “psychopath?” It is appalling.
I would like to know whether police departments are going to go through each and every one of my posts. How are they going to do that? Get a word counter and count every “so,” “because,” and “um?” Are they going to appear on my doorstep because I type the word because too much?
Basically, I don’t think someone can be considered a psychopath based on word usage. There should be a lot of other clues, too, and language shouldn’t be the only way the police judge criminals to be pycho. Include some other examples of how you might decide someone to be a pychopath killer or a person who likes the word “so.”

Way to make me feel like a psychopath! I say “so” and “um” without realizing it sometimes! Wait, I already knew I was a psycho… In that case, thanks for helping me learn about meself! At least I empathize with people, ehh? Interesting article!

I feel that this article somewhat encourages an unhealthy way of thinking. It’s as if it exists to encourage people to judge others based on how they talk or think. I have relationships with people who are not neurotypicals, and many of them tend to experience empathy in “abnormal” ways. I think our (once accepted as fact) definitions of “sane” and “insane” are not valid, nor were they ever. People’s brains work in various ways, some more dissimilar to the neurotypical than others, and I do not believe that this is grounds for labeling them as “insane.”

Nice article. Makes me start to doubt the mental stability of some of my neighbors lol.

that is sooooooo radddical:)

Interesting research! I wonder how useful this will ultimately be.

wierd

How unbelievably irresponsible of these researchers at Cornell to report this drivel. Everybody says “so” and “because”! Everybody says “uh” and “umm”. And if you don’t dwell on basic needs like food and money, then you don’t MEET basic needs like food and money!

What they should have identified was the extent to which psychopaths exhibit ‘narcissistic personality disorder’. Because of that, I am convinced.

I have dealt with narcissists (including type-A personalities) all my life. I am certain that these people are inherently psychopaths. What is disturbing is that there so many narcissists out there. In fact, a psychopath who turns to crime is simply a narcissist who has crossed a certain line.

Fantastic work, Professor Hancock. Another tool to help identify broken people.

Source please.

This is quite fascinating. Although the study seems to be done on unsuccessful psychopaths – ie they have been caught and jailed for their actions – it would be interesting to hear about how every day psychopaths communicate (ie ones who know not to kill people but may still manipulate or emotionally damage, rip people off etc).

Well…ummm…so, this is interesting because….ummm… (heh heh heh, I’m going to have a lot of fun with this!)

This doesn’t really help much because everyone uses those words.

Wow… I didn’t think that someone would talk differently because they are a psychopath. At first I just thought that these were gangster kinds of words that they used because of growing up in a city in a gang. Not that there is anything wrong with cities, just gangs which are typically located in cities.

I find this very interesting because I desire to go into the career of criminal profiling. It would be another thing that one would have to study but in the long run, it may be useful in catching criminals.

I don’t know if its just me or not, but I found the title misleading because I expected that it implied how to recognize a psychopath through their speech. Since the study conducted takes into account their speech ONLY about their own crimes, the former can’t be possible to ascertain, because I’m pretty sure that psychopaths would not be conversing about their own crimes directly with just anyone. The dialogue analyzed of a convicted psychopath in a jail cell or otherwise as opposed to one of a person who is a psychopath unbeknownst to the person conversing with, would of course yield completely different results.

Hmm, rather interesting. I’m now going to be on the lookout for people who use the words “so”, “because”, “uh”, and “umm”.

Uh, umm, so because people talk without smooth agility, it means they’re psychopaths?

I’d have to see all the research done entirely videotaped and uncut first. Tested on a huge sample of people. Then maybe I’d believe it.

ummm… I use disfluencies quite often.

I think you should remove this post and not write about things you don’t know anything about. This is ridiculous I use so and because all the time, so that means I’m a psychopath? Or in other words using to many qualifiers constitutes as psychopathic? Psychologists and investigators should sdfu and not publish what they are doing so freely. You’ll never catch criminals that way. Retard.

Another thing is tons of people don’t want to forge emotional bonds with all kinds of people. How can you tell if someone has formed an emotional bond with someone else? How are you going to investigate whether is a psychopath or not. Screw your hot topic this one sucks dick.

very knowledgeable thought

Wait, why do the investigators have access to Facebook posts in the first place? Surely you don’t mean to tell me that those stupid conspiracy theories are true? You know, the ones about Facebook being a way for the government to keep track of us?

If that last statement isn’t just a typo or a lack of clarification, the I’m extremely worried about the direction our society is headed. I’m not by any means a cratophobia, but it sure seems like police should need at least a search warrant to search your private digital files, just like they would to search your private paper files. I mean, seriously, random law officers reading your Facebook and profiling your personality? That’s about as ridiculously intrusive as phone-tapping, mail monitoring or the men in black.

well, apparently im a psychopath.
and I thought I was just anti-social.

Without seeing the report it sounds like some of the conclusions drawn are quite illogical.

If convicted criminals are interviewed in jail about their crimes it would be normal for them to express remorse, guilt, and religious beliefs. They may genuinely be feeling these emotions as a result of having time to dwell on their crimes, as a result of punishment, or they may be expected to express them to non-convicts in order to gain parole.

Criminals who have been diagnosed as psychopaths wouldn’t feel these emotions as strongly (if at all) when convicted and in jail. Therefore the language that they use in that specific situation would naturally be different.

This makes this part of the research less useful as it all it demonstrates is that psychopaths don’t feel guilty or remorseful (which is closely linked to the definition of psychopath), and that non-psychopaths do.

If other non-psychopathic felons that don’t feel guilt we’re also interviewed for comparison then the research would be more useful e.g. we could find out if they talk basic needs like food and money more as much as the psychopathic felons.

As I said I haven’t read the study but from the above article it sounds as if it is fundamentally flawed. Put simply I wonder if any of the results of the research done in jail can be applied elsewhere.

Maybe a better study to help investigators would be to examine the language used by psychopathic criminals and non-psychopathic criminals in police interviews

Anything that nails the sucker is good for me!!

Completely far-fetched. Calling it a “stretch” is too kind of a description. What does this suggest about profiling practices of police? So, like, because I use these words, I exhibit psychopathic behavioral traits will now be subjected to surveillance, profiling and a potential abuse of authority?

Although murder should never be condoned, there certainly is a logical explanation for the behavior of these so-called psychopaths–but it’s far too elusive for science to explain when a limited set of variables tries to explain human behavior.

Please i need a clearer explanation on the word above. Thanks.

Quite interesting…

Criminals has what is called slangs which at times do not exist in english DICTIONARY they use it among themselves and it is being formed by them also.

H

that would be great…

So they plan to invade our Facebooks to look for “suspected” psychopaths? Then what, track them down? Sounds like a plan.

O.o That’s highly interesting! I wonder what my speech aptterns say about me?

hellow evryone, im alive!!

Gee I was hoping this might be more conclusive, like psychopaths used the words murder, kill and blood more often than uh or umm. I think these conclusions would equally fit most of the engineers I have met who tend to be very causal and logical, talk a lot about money and usually are not the most articulate of parrots on the perch.

whahahaha

sooooooooooo yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh…

I agree with profiling criminals, but not ordinary people.

Hmm, over 19 million people have seen Dictionary.com’s Front Page yet
there are no comments to be made in over two hours or more now.
It seems this piece hit home to a lot of psychopath people reading this,
recalling everything the article stated, sitting back going “Whoa!” and
to throw all logic out the window, calling it blasphemy despite the facts.

There are a great many people I know that do everything this article states,
and every bit of this is true and applies to them. A great article for sure!

However, they should have included “well” and “you know!” thrown into
every sentence, riddled in everything with what they say.

@tee hee

‘lingustic’ is another termf or ‘language’… or something like that.

Keep in mind that this study is loose and not exact, so not all people who fit this profile are actually psychopaths. I, for one, lose my train of thought while I’m speaking, and yet I’m pretty sure I’m not a psychopath. (I feel bad when I squish a spider or accidentally bump into someone in the hallway.)

In response to, Annonnymmous
“Wait, why do the investigators have access to Facebook posts in the first place?
Surely you don’t mean to tell me that those stupid conspiracy theories are true?
You know, the ones about Facebook being a way for the government to keep track of us?”

And in response to, “but police departments and investigators hope to use
Craigslist or Facebook posts to determine psychological profiles of suspects
or potential criminals.”

It’s not about a ‘hope’ to use anything; [it is] happening!

Of course they are true; that has been the plan almost the entire time!
Just think, no exaggeration, they have half the world on that site at their grip!
How could they not think about or want to control and record the world?
It is being done all the time. Being on Facebook hinders your chance of getting
a job as well, in which the person who are hiring new emplyees at jobs
(despite being a form of invasion of privacy [they don't tell you this])
bring up your info on your Facebook, and if they see something they
do not like or if you come off as unprofessional/not presentable,
then they won’t hire you!

The privacy policy on Facebook is sugarcoated with lies. If you think
the message in this Article is psychotic or makes no sense to you,
then you have not yet met those leading Facebook.

It’s been said many a times, “The blind world needs to wake up already!”
But alas! it will never come to be, and people will continue to run wrecklessly
into these cleverly placed traps.

First of all, I think this is a rather curious article. I mean, to label psychopaths as people who use “so” and “because” too much and having the police investigating through social sites like facebook to prove a person to be a psychopath is preposterous. Judging a person by their use of words and their status on facebook shouldn’t be how you profile a psychopath! Just because I’m the kind of person who use “because” too much in a sentcence, does that mean that I am reasoning my crime? or maybe my mental dictionary is limited to only a few words. There can be many reasons for things like this and honestly this article explains how there are some people in the world who come up with the most obviously stupid excuses to spy on people and degrade them. It seems as though the police are running out of ideas and looks like they are just incompetent. The mind of psychopath is just to vast and distorted to be encased by people who try to define a person through their facebook accounts and their limited terminology. I guess that makes us all psychopaths because don’t we all do that?

In a nearby city, a couple of years ago, a twelve year old girl was raped and murdered. Police arrested a 26 year old man who lived in the neighborhood. Residents found him”strange”. He had an odd way of speaking and acting He had no friends, he lived with his mother and he played the oboe. You know how dangerous those oboe-players are! There was no actual physical evidence to link him to the crime. Police arrested him and “interviewed” him for 43 hours. (Read harassed and threatened) He absolutely denied any connection to the crime, but couldn’t remember exactly where he was or what he was doing when the crime took place.

The police charged him and took it to trial. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years with no parole. After about four months in local jail while an appeal was launched, before he got shipped off to a Federal prison, somebody finally processed some DNA and found that it matched a known sex offender. The conviction was overturned and he was released, with his life in a shambles.

Some author got the smart idea to interview members of the jury to find why they had convicted an innocent man. It turns out that 11 jury members ranged from straight acquit, to, didn’t feel sure beyond a reasonable doubt. They were led by a single forceful woman who coerced them to vote guilty. Her justification was that, when his interview was read into evidence, he was quoted as saying, “I didn’t have anything to do with that, at all!”, and anyone who kept using the phrase “at all” was obviously guilty, and lying about it. Sometimes speech patterns are just speech patterns.

Well a very interesting topic.

Psychology has gone this far?

A good read. Psychopaths are too clever and complicated to make conclusions about with such a short article.

This article seems designed to play to the insecurities of all of us who visit this site everyday to learn words. Most of us are probably well aware of how often we say ‘um’, ’so’ and ‘because’—a lot.

Cool! Another credit to facebook. Their site can be the best venue to determine “potential criminals”. I should support it because some of the crimes’ cause is facebook. Goodluck guys

OOOHHHH,,,,,ITS PRETTY AMAZING,,,im now watching on my sentence pattern..

It should be noted that this is just one piece of the collective that aids in identifying patterns. The more individual indicators that come together the clearer the pattern. One simple indicator such as a casual speech pattern identified in the article could be the difference between a prevented disaster and hindsight being 20/20.

We will never know all the prevented harm we’ve averted, but this a small step in the right direction.

Now, was this study designed well enough that the findings might make their way into the diagnostic criteria for that new DSM – V that we are STILL waiting for…?

police departments and investigators hope to use craigslist or facebook posts to determine psychological profiles of suspects or potential criminals.

^ I find this extremely sinister. Anyway, the way someone writes differs vastly from the way they speak.

Uhhh… I use some of those phrases… NOOO! I’m a killer. Lol. I think this study is so-so as some have mentioned.

I think this post is somewhat helpful. However, even some of the most compassionate people of this world get to the point once in awhile where they do not have empathy for others.

I just don’t know if I could ever judge someone solely on how they speak. I myself have said things I didn’t mean when I was mad. But I never killed anyone and don’t plan to.

Does those mean or off-the-wall things I said mean I am a psychopath? I hope not. I did apologize though, because I do feel remorse when I realize I’ve hurt someone. Sometimes too, people who are working through emotional issues may put up walls.

I am just not understanding this article entirely. It does have some value but I have been a person who often would stereotype others based just on the way they talk. There is a possibility of being too paranoid sometimes.

nice job hancock.

Well now ya know……now im gonna have to actually pay attention to that

THIS IS A GREAT ARTICLE, OF COURSE IT HELPS,IF READ CORRECTLY, THESE INTERVIEWS WERE ON CRIMINALS,WHO ARE ALREADY IN SOME SORT OF STATE INSTITUTION, WETHER A PRISON OR MENTAL WARD. YOU CAN ABSOLUTELY FIND OUT ALOT ABOUT A PERSON BY THEIR LINGO, I THINK ITS A GREAT BREAKTHROUGH…

next time how about a study on how an intelligent person wipes there bottom!

be on the lookout when theres the next press conferance at the whitehouse ha ha

i like how they used a phrenology model for a picture of a legitimate study haha

I was expecting a bit more detailed explanation on understanding criminal minds, not expecting to just see the words “SO”, “Because”.
How can you just rely on these two words as these are used on a regular basis by many people.

The article on this Psycopath topic should be clear or should not have published this rubbish to make people believe with a narrow minded thought..

Some time later in the future, another ambitious and less capable person in the field would publish another article rubbishing the current one and the pattern goes on and one..

Stop fooling people with daft articles of yours, people are smart enough to not to absorb this crap.

Sounds an awful lot like thoughtcrime to me. Doubleplusgood!

so, uhm, do you have any money? because, uhh, i’m hungry

i think this is interesting. although i use umm so and because a lot. i dont think its true that just because u use so a lot doesnt mean ur a psychopath. i most definitely am NOT a psychopath.

Fascinating article, I would love to read more on this.

Just becasue someone created the word psychopath it doesn’t mean that such a thing exists–psychologist are just people who are so full of themselves, and so “superior”, that they think they can classify the others, the inferior ones–the canaille, the mass, the non-psychologists, the ignoramuses…

Uh-oh. Better watch out for Thumpkin, the may-be “introverted psychopathic engineer” See, among others, NYT article “Why Are So Many Terrorists Engineers?”http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=engineers%20%20terrorists&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2010%2F09%2F12%2Fmagazine%2F12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html&ei=pa-qTsf4L-bW0QH72LWkDw&usg=AFQjCNG414_89FXZtbozid10XoQmBovKiA. Dilbert, too, for that matter.

Seriously, these correlations are interesting but the “authorities” have this frightening tendency to think they mean much more than they do. The excesses to which the PATRIOT act has been put provide ample evidence.

Yet another industry created to keep the psychologists in work. The conclusions are bullshit unless they account for 100% Otherwise the exceptions will suffer. Then they will use the ‘we still dont know everything’ excuse to continue ‘researching’ ,writing papers and making a career out of this ‘hunch’. Perhaps they are the true coldblooded academic psychopaths!

”Defined by psychologists, a psychopath is someone who does not forge the emotional bonds that normal people do and do not empathize with others. They tend to see people as means to their own ends, rather than as individuals.”

Uhm, The second ‘do’ should be ‘does’. And ‘they’ should be ‘He or she’ or ‘The psychopath’, seeing as the first sentence referred to the ‘psychopath’ singular….
I use ‘but’ a lot in my writing, too….
Interesting though. (‘Though crops up a lot too..)
This is a great site, by the way.

[...] ‘PSYCHOPATHS’ and profiling, with sociopathic indifference, — is proof psychologists are psychopaths. — To generalize is illogical inference. — Not that Nut Jobs go into Law Enforcement, — Only those who make their own law — or the Politics of being above it. — We’re in it together, after all — is said and done — because it never is quite so. — So Some Time the outcome is illogical: — Uncertainty makes it logically — Right, Cha know. –>>L.T.Rhyme –”Uh, Oui. Cookie.”–>>J.J.Rousseau This entry was posted in DEMOCRAZY, DICTCOMHOTWORD, JJROUSSEAU, L.T.Rhyme and tagged ASO, Democracy, JJRousseau, LT, LTRhyme, the HOT WORD by admin. Bookmark the permalink. [...]

umm, uh, I am hungry, so where is my money, umm, because I need to eat, now!! Do I qualify?

Didn’t want to get political with this, but has anyone listened to the president speak? “Uhhh, uhhh, because of the Republicans…” Just saying…

Anybody look at politician speech patterns. Seems that would be riddled with self interest.

Interesting. Nothing definite and very general thus, I must conclude that further study is mandatory, but only by ‘willing’ participants in a study. Forgoing peoples private lives through their speech for which they choose to ‘post’ on FB, My Space, etc…is in my opinion pointless due to the differences in actual speech vs. what people choose to write/post. Not to mention I believe you might have a problem on your hands when it comes to ‘privacy’ matters. Not everyone is going to be ‘oll korrect’ aka O.K. with their posts being used in ‘research’ without their consent or knowledge.

@Rin;
No!! We’ve given up enough of those rights in the patriot act!

@This article:
This is really interesting, but seems pretty inconclusive. More definite ideas seem to be needed…in high school, I hear many because talking in little more than disfluencies and lining up all sorts of reasons with “because.” “I didn’t do my homework because…”
However, interesting article, and I’m going to look into this more.

I know I shouldn’t, but I once made an opinion about a person I didn’t realy know based on his speach and I turned out to be right. No, wait, two people.

This is BS. They say um? That means anyone giving a speech is an imminent murderer because they say it incessantly. Oops I said because… this is the worst article ever.

I’m quite sure if these idiots(who performed this study) study the wardrobes of various criminals in colder climates, let’s say murderers for the sake of argument, they would find that most of the murderers wore a warm coat when they committed their crime.

Therefore, anyone found wearing a warm coat is then more likely to be a murderer!

One does not cause or affect the other!

This article makes teenagers look like psychopaths, I must admit.
However, it does make sense, I believe there should be further research into the speech patterns and identification of other people, by way of interest and sensing danger. Very neat.

There must be a lot of kids in elementary and high school who are PSYCHOs — because they talk peppered with UHHs and UMMs. LOL.

waffles

I got to “study” a psychopath or sociopath up close and personal for 10 years. I was married to one and believe me those language and personality markers are quite accurate… It is hard for them to distinguish between true reality and their own little private reality which they tend to surround themselves with… If you interrupt their thought process with true reality they seem to get angry and upset… I found that they don’t tolerate any kind of change that they aren’t in total control of… The psychopath I lived with was also a pathological liar…

But… “Oh my, that wasn’t his fault that the whole world was crazy and he was the only sane person alive!”… That is what he actually believed! The psychiatrists, the judge, me, my lawyer, my family,his lawyer, his family… Everyone was crazy except him!

One sad fact that you always must remember when dealing with people like this… Is: Crazy people don’t know they are crazy… They can’t even ask themselves the question: Am I crazy? They can not even question the notion that it might be them… That is because in their little world no one else exists… Not really… That is why they have don’t have normal emotional bonds with others and also why they don’t have empathy for others. Other people just aren’t real, they don’t have lives outside of the psychopath’s knowledge of them. It’s like they are cartoon characters in the psychopath’s world. When people leave the presence of a psychopath, they disappear… It is kind of like how infants and toddlers perceive the world… As a normal child develops this perception changes and other people become separate from their lives… A psychopath or sociopath does not develop properly… Now whether they are born that way or it is learned behavior or quite possibly what I believe… Both. That is a nature versus nurture question… personally I believe it takes both aspects to create an actual psychopath… Nature and nurture… as in the case of my ex-husband…

Yet another way for the establishment to profile its citizens. Good work, not.

Completely erroneous and flawed. As any psychology buff will tell you, the use of irony and deception is not intentionally evil but rather a means to mentally block emotional pain they are experiencing either from the crime or a bad childhood. Some are abused as children and suffer emotional issues (ie. not able rather than not willing to bond with other people on an emotional level). In other words, they are deceiving themselves rather than those around them; deception is a coping mechanism they developed to deal with a world they do not belong in. It is the result rather than the cause. The use of causal phrases is also because the mind has blocked emotion completely so that only logic remains. It does not mean that they are methodically plotting murders. As for the “disfluencies,” how many of us do not use these in our daily speech? And have the so-called experts considered the fact that perhaps they were nervous during the interviews…or even too uneducated to even string intellectual-sounding words together?

Wow… That’s something to look out for.

So, um, you think this will, uh, help police officers convict criminals? Because, uh, that’s great, so that we’ll help, uhhhh, people. Ummm…so, yeah.

Trolling FB and other social media sites for the aforementioned speech patterns seems like folly. Generally, individuals do not include disfluencies in writing, unless that writing is fiction. …Actually, social media arguably is fiction…. Never mind.

An interesting article that doesn’t give us enough information about the fascinating study to actually pass judgment on it. It’s easy to pick apart the study in the cursory explanation they’ve given here, but we don’t know the parameters. However, I was also struck by the fact that out of the many university professors I’ve known (having been married to one) that this brief description sounds very much like how they speak in public & often in private- lots of “because,” “so,” “um,” & other various disfluencies. In fact, the gentleman I was married to is a communications professor & I laughed heartily that the very descriptors Dictionary.com chose to point out are his trademark, as well as several of my best friends who are philosophy professors. I wondered immediately if Jeffrey Hancock, who lead the study, noticed the similarities, or if it was obvious there was a larger discrepancy than these little tidbits that Dictionary.com glanced over. Again, interesting article that should make us go investigate, not suspect all who stumble over their speech, searching for their perfect word to explain their thoughts.

so.. ummm. just because uhh i say these things i’m a psychopath? good to kno

lol thats not true i say “so” alot. i say it wen i run outta stuff to say to somone and want them ta talk about somthin. i say “uhhh and ummm” all the ime to not “because” im a physco but a little slow to answer somtimes. so i call bullshit on this one.

Wow, there are a lot of paranoid people. As if they would only use this type of profiling. This is just another useful tool to recognize patterns. There are plenty of other ways to “out” a psychopathic personality. It’s called due diligence, people.

Makes you wonder about certain politicians, especially in the current administration, huh?

Although I found this article extremely interesting, the thought of using Facebook and craigslist to “track down” potential criminals using this strategy makes me giggle until my sides ache. REALLY? Cuz…um…well… I speak that way sometimes (only when I am not paying attention to it) but I very rarely post my comments that way. And I most certainly do not have people tied up in my basement! I also have 4 teenagers that use um, huh, well, and like in an alarming abundance…Does that mean I am raising psychopaths in training a should be getting them all some immediate help? Is the mental health of my children in danger? No. It merely means that we are in a society where language has become lazy. So…um…take it however you wish. Have a fantastic day! =)

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12: 34).
So, a person’s future actions can relatively be surmised or predicted by
the regular kind of speech he uses. Or, I can assume what manner of man
he is by his vulgar speech. Is he inclined toward violence or perversity?
Listen to what he says, and the adjectives he sprinkles his speech with.

“They (Psychopaths) tend to see people as means to their own ends, rather than as individuals.”

Isn’t that the rule rather than the exception these days, and not just on Wall Street? Yes, there still are some truely wonderful altruistic people. However, we consider them precious finds, if/when we are lucky enough to encounter them. They seem to be this rare nowadays. This wasn’t always the case in America, the generous. But the (Gen-X) “me-generation”, by definition, has pretty much done away with that caring attitude.

Yet, to categorize all of the “me first” people and “users” as psychopaths or sociopaths, seems to be an exaggeration and perhaps an insult. Such labels are dangerous anyways, because they make it hard for people to redefine themselves. Yet, we can only hope, for society’s sake, that the pendulum will eventually swing back, and more people will rediscover humanity and the “Mensch” in them for the first time again. Who wouldn’t prefer America the beautiful & generous to America the ugly & greedy?!

They don’t mean that simply saying “so” and “because” makes you a psychopath. I’m pretty sure they mean something like this:

Psychopath: I had to kill them because I had no other way to achieve my goals. I killed them so I could reach my goals.

Psychopaths explain the reasons why they killed someone as though it is logical and the only thing they could have done; they try to make you sympathize and understand why they did it. And they truly believe it was the only/best option.

Well, I agree for the most part with a couple of statements made by my fellow dic.com nerds. Not all psychologists that conduct “research studies” have a completely objective view on things that have to do with the human mind and how it functions. One thing we can all agree on is that it is a complex mystery. Most “diagnosed” social disorders are hoopla anyway. I mean taking a Bean-O just because you have a lot of gas? Chances are it was something you ate. Being diagnosed with severe depression? Its ridiculous in 1770 there weren’t as many recorded cases of these mental disorders; even psychopathy. These are labels created by the society that is always pushing to set a code or standard of living for every individual out there. When will these people realize that all of those so-called societal standards -similar to prerequisites in college or the induction process of becoming a frat-boy/girl- are just delusions of the mind? Frankly, if they are truly intelligent and have illusions of being mentally superior to us, then why did they not think of that first (societal standards being the grand delusion)? Stick two vitamin B12 complex, for your nervous system and think about THAT before you diagnose (label) anybody lol.

This is ridiculous.

Although I am less in-touch with my emotions and generally have less empathy than most people, I am not a psychopath. I once wondered if I was a psychopath, so I researched it, and found out that if I was a psychopath, I wouldn’t care enough to research it!

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I am INTJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging). A lot of INTJs and other NTs in general may be wrongly accused of being psychopaths simply because we take our emotions into account much less than other personality types.

Also, since when is being a psychopath – in and of itself – a crime? It’s not. Police cannot detain you simply because they suspect that you’re a psychopath.

Absurd! Absurd!

I would sooner smite the son. So, see I got that goin’ for me.

When I use those words, I’m just imitating bill murry. So lock me up. Fools! Such fools. Dangerous fools. Listen:

Anyone who thinks to marginalize a human being for using words such as: so, see, oh, path or because, is to stupid to vote and a danger to be so suggestible and misinformed.

Psychopath- i commend your comment. Well spoken. Touché.

I meant to say: smite the Sun. a Freudian slip, I suppose.

@ Random Poster

The word is reckless, as in reckon = consider, plan. Wreckless, is a safe driver.

@ Danny

Do you really feel this study is any more legitimate than Phrenology? There’s a new one becoming more common, called Irridology, where they scan your eyes and make judgements based on the layout of the blood vessels at the back of the eyes. Ooh, more mumbo-jumbo!

@ Fred

“People are smart enough not to absorb this crap”? Ya daft sod. Just look at some of the posts on this thread. They’ll not only absorb this crap, they’ll go looking for more and different crap to absorb.

This is pseudo-science psychobabble–just another version of phrenology.

Anyone “amazed” by this article needs to research “logical fallacies”, and look specifically for “irrelevant conclusion” and “non sequitur”. “Psychopaths say “um” and “uh”, therefore anyone who says “um” and “uh” is a potential killer!” The police have got to use this new, undoubtably vital and oh-I-can’t-scream-loud-enough true information to protect all us poor, weak, just-waiting-to-be-slaughtered unfortunates!

Why did the chicken cross the road? To kill the farmer, murder his family and use his truck and guns to rob liquor stores! There’s a study! No, really! The Agriculture department MUST set up road patrols to stop these foul, fowl murderers!

Get a life, people, then invest in a mind.
Oh, and a sense of humor, umm, that’d be nice, too.

P.S., eat more chicken.

(And keep splitting your infinitives; un-split, undamaged infinitives are a sign of an educated, knowledgeable—but exact, and therefore dangerous, mind!)

A disappointingly inconclusive and misleading article – even dangerous, if it prompts people to judge others on such inconsequent premises.

i think i’ll just stop talking all together….

I agree with “EM” above. Narcissists come in two basic types: “somatic narcissists” and “intellectual narcissists.” The intellectual narcs learn how to use language to manipulate people in order to get their “narcissistic supply.” The better ones learn how to edit their language and to mimic affectation (that they don’t actually feel)so they will appear “normal” and not give themselves away. Really good intellectual narcs can even fool their therapists. I don’t think this “study” really has much merit identifying psychopaths from their language patterns.

Hmmm, interesting, but it wouldn’t be 100% reliable would it. I mean I use so, and because a lot, and I don’t think I’m a psychopath, but who knows?

I use “uh” and “um” in nearly every sentence i say. Also, I’m paranoid…I hope that isn’t a sign of something……I mean, I always knew i was special, but…

I just read Lily’s comment up there^^^ and now that i think about it, a lot of my friends and acquaintances use disfluencies all the time (including me, as i said before). Maybe it isn’t because they are mentally unstable that they use disfluencies, but because they’re intelligent. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but me and my friends use “uh” and “um” while we are thinking of a more appropriate word that fits the sentence. Maybe they are unstable because they know too much. That can mess with a person’s head, you know.

Come on, people! Just because you use “so” or “because” doesn’t mean you or someone else is a psychopath. Read the next sentence, it’s the context that can be telling. The way a criminal rationalizes an act is what the article refers to here. To me, it sounds like a psychopath explains their decisions as if they had no other choice, “I did this because it was a means of survival.” or “I needed something badly so I took it and I have no remorse.” Seems to me that attempting to profile potential criminals from a Craigslist or Facebook post is a slippery slope and would most likely only be used as supporting evidence not as incriminating evidence. I don’t like the idea of Big Brother either, but just remember to analyze the context, too.

wat a radom topic!

SOOOO because you use words like “so” and “because” and have reasons to methodically act on an emotion that you manifested your a psychopath, but if you regard to your religion and feel sorry for doing a crime based on your emotional outburst your not… and SO BECAUSE you mention food and money in your speech regarding a crime (probably lacking the two) your also a psychopath.

I would deem anyone who agrees with this post a psychopath.

It’s settled, then: every introvert must be imprisoned. I’ll see you all in twenty-something years.

This won’t work. I believe banning anything that alters the brain will work, all these physcopaths will die someday. But in the mean time, I suppose you can judge them on the way they present them selves. HaHa

I now understand why my DM (he’s a psychologist) tends to use weird talking when acting as a psychopathic villain.

Definitely the judgments should be logical, and it is not meant to say that whenever you use the disfluencies, it automatically tells you that you’re a psychopath. Surely it would be based for numbers of analysis thru logical exams before one can tell that u are a psychopath. Dont be paranoid people.

………I know someone who fits this profile perfectly…….

SOOO… i think dictionary.com should change the way how they put words here. Majority of the people/commentators dont seem to understand or get it, or misinterpret. Im reading here almost everyday for your new articles, then everyday there are these people who doesnt get it.

uh, um, i mean, uh, does this count when someone reads from a teleprompter? perhaps we should do a “uh” ‘n “um” count on obama’s next speech?

Do these people realize that, when a baby speaks, it sometimes sounds a lot like “so” or “uh” or “um?” I suppose that this is meant to mean that even infants are psychopathic. How could this be reversed? How could we reduce the number of psychopaths in society? Population control!

This was inaccurate. Some people are more drilled in grammar, and frequent public speakers rarely say “uh” or “um” because it makes for less impressive delivery. This would also implicate all job-lovers who work in economics for talking about money. In addition, there are atheistic and agnostic psychopaths. Some psychopaths don’t even care to justify their crime by blaming it on something else, like religion. This didn’t convince me. There is no such thing as “regular” speech. There are no two people that speak exactly the same way. This article also made people illogically paranoid about their speech patterns. Really, people? If you can feel empathy you aren’t a psychopath. And conversely, having a stutter does not clear you of the possibility of this mentality. Behavioral tendencies and your personal outlook are going to tell you much more than your speech patterns. In general, self-diagnoses aren’t very accurate anyway.

I find it interesting that this study was completed on psychopaths in prison. As proven in many studies, psychopaths are some of the most intelligent people on this planet. After living with a psychopath I can tell you that they can and will imitate any behavior that fits their needs. This includes mimicking emotions, empathy and language. They think through everything they do resourcefully and because they are detached from their emotions, their thoughts are not distorted or clouded by their feelings. Accordingly, they do not often end up in jail. These people are very hard to read because most of us associate our thoughts with feelings although this is not commonly dictated by our use of language. This is why we so often have the proverbial mass murderer living down the street and all anyone can say about him is…”oh, he was SUCH a nice guy! I can’t believe it!” I can almost guarantee that given this same study on the exact same prisoners, after they have read this study, all of their actions of language will have changed. Police will never be able to profile these people because authorities are governed by too many rules including the rules of language. Do psychopaths follow rules? If not, how can we create a study based on a set of rules to categorize people who have none?

WOW now that i know that….. i think a lot of people i know are going to become criminals

I use a lot of ’so’ and ‘because’ when I’m talking…
And I do hope that’s coincidence.

….
Give me a moment.
You know (oh, look, I’m a psychopath) the sound that a heart monitor makes when your heart stops beating? That long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…..
Well, that’s what my mind is doing right now.
*face palm* This is the worst article I have ever read (sorry Author-what’s-your-name). I just started taking psychology for my AP class and I can tell this is a piece of crap just by glancing at it; no numbers, barely an explanation, not correctly studied at all if everything that the study entitled was written—or even simplified—in this.
First off:
CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION!
Just because you see many psychopaths (which, by the way, isn’t a term used any more—it’s now ASPD. Look it up if you don’t know what it is) say “um” and “because” to explain something doesn’t mean that its a definitive sign that they have a mental problem (even if they were already diagnosed—it just can’t be used as a ’sign’ or ’symptom’ for person with the problem). That’s ridiculous. Someone already pointed out they someone who is emotionally detached because of their childhood issues/abuse could easily not have emotional bonds because they don’t want to get close to another person in fear of disappointment and hurt, because they fell like they can’t be understood, or if they just don’t trust people any more. Therefore, people who are not psychopaths can easily ’sound,’ according to this article, like a psycho. And normal (using this term loosely…) people use disfluencies all the time. English is practically a disfluency, it’s so disconjointed that I find it kinda hypocritical to even call words like ‘uh,’ ‘um,’ ‘eh’ and phrases like, ‘you know’ as ‘disfluencies.’ Pfft.
Though I appreciate that… Oh, sorry, I was hoping that re-checking the article would show that the researchers ‘may’ think that this can identify psychopaths, but it just said that this law-enforcers ‘hope’ this study will help them look through people’s facebook and computer files. Hurrah for government corruption (shoot, I just used irony…Ummmm, uhhh… I suppose this isn’t verbal, now is it?)
Second:
I want numbers. I want to see how many people they’ve studied—how many were psychopaths, how many were normal murdering prisoners?
Why was this not tested on everyday people? The psychopaths that have not planned and committed any murder because they can rationally see that that is just a really really stupid idea? Or just because they like their hands clean…
Was this only tested at one prison? HOW MANY PEOPLE? If not, how many prisons? WHY ONLY PRISONS? What, were they too scared that talking to friendly psychopaths would make them see the same traits in themselves?
Third:
Was the author actually tipping us off? She/he basically told us that the police may be looking through people’s private information.
Thank you, Author-what’s-your-name
Fourth:
Who the hell said that the convicts were experiencing guilt? Excuse me? Police can mind read now? What it should say is that the ‘prisoners who expressed signs of guilt.’
Fifth:
This obviously wasn’t supposed to be a case study, so there really should have been more samples. Or at least give a tiny hint of how many people they actually bothered to test. This just seems like really badly covered case of laziness… I should know, I’m extremely lazy, but at least I learned how to hid it from my teachers. My parents on the other hand have repeatedly told me to finish my essay on religions that I was actually going on to this site to find a word for ’sacrifice’ (I was too lazy to search my brain for more words than ‘kill,’ ‘murder,’ ‘ritual,’ and ‘creepiness’). I also happen to be a procrastinator that some of my teachers are initially surprised about… but then eventually not,,,
Sixth:
This study should have been done through naturalistic observation. Though would that be against, you know, the law to stalk psychopaths and normal people to figure out their differing speech patterns?
Uh, yeaah, but at least it would have shown better results and a better methodology than this… I don’t even know what to call it. Oh, looky there—I’m in need of a dictionary! If only, if only…
Seventh:
I’m losing my train of thought, I’m getting bored (I get easily bored, I lack motivation—I’m a suppressed introverted gifted kid, I swear! Funny actually, I thought I was a psychopath for a day last year when I decided it would be more entertaining than my math homework to figure out why I was pretty indifferent about my uncle’s funeral. I actually forgot to take into consideration that I only met the man once and I’m not the type to just start crying when I’m watching a man play the star-spangled banner on a trumpet. There wasn’t a coffin, just a jar that didn’t even look like an urn, so I guess I just didn’t really feel like I was staring at someone just just died. But after that little scare I was okay because I started crying when I heard this song that was supposedly from 14000BCE. Its on youtube actually, and I couldn’t stop bawling, it was really embarrassing….thank God, no one was home, I would have died of shame. Er, anyway,,,)
On the other hand, I have to respect Roxy and look at it from her perspective.
She said that she studied a psychopath(s?), her husband, for ten years, so who am I, a fifteen-year old kid who is procrastinating on her English assignment, to argue with her? Just by hearing what she experienced is able to sway me on my view that this article is complete BS. I liked the ‘own reality/world’ description of a psychopath—it helps to visual what a person with the mental condition is going through and better understand that they are not just on a higher level of sane than we are because they don’t have emotions or empathy to mess with their focus and thinking.
So, my opinion on this is that the article is crap, but the study needs further research and articles or reports such as this to be in better detail to cause less confusion and just all around annoyance.
Hold on a sec—isn’t there something in the ethical guidelines (American-something-something-something— or something with American in it. And there’s a British one…) that says that research is suppose to be given to the public fully and whatnot and let society decide what to do with the research? Well then, I want some records and archives or whatever on this research so that I have an interesting thing to use as my procrastination material! And I’m sure that other people who are interested or other psychologists would appreciate it.
My sister just walked into the room and told me it was Friday. Noooo (I mean, YESSSSSS!), I swear that I thought it was Thursday! My parents are torturers, they like to do this to me! Great, I would have woken up early and would have walked to the bus and realize that no one is there and I would have panicked and…
I’m going to sleep now. Bye.
(remember, I’m fifteen, tired, so everything I could have said in here could be completely wrong… why did anyone bother to read all of this? Jeez… but congrats, I think…)

The study is called “Hungry like the wolf: A word‐pattern analysis of the language of psychopaths” and is available as a Pdf through Google scholar. It’s not very hard to read and quite short so if you’re interested…

Even if the findings are correct (they seem to match the results of previous research) what I said about procedure in my earlier comments stands.

Sorry it makes a great story but the study is weak.

Now read this part of the article:

“but police departments and investigators hope to use craigslist or facebook posts to determine psychological profiles of suspects or potential criminals.”

Do you really think that have police departments and investigators have ever heard of the report? I doubt it, but journalist looking to make an interesting story and professors wanting to get attention… it’s called spin

Examination of TV interviews with politicians also shows repeated use of “so” & “because”, a focus on material needs including money e.g. the constant use of phrases such as “struggling financially” or “putting food on the table”, they also appear have a greater number of disfluencies than non-politicians being interviewed – leading me to concluded that the majority of politicians are psychopathic murderous criminals

Pounce on a study you haven’t studied.
Rip apart a study you disagree w/yet leave no solutions. [Any1 can tear down or say Eff you!
If you don't agree, why list all your prejudices & yakyakyak to show us how stupid you really are [& waste time by typing lots&lots of obviousness [duh] & negativity.
Pity the people who hafta live w/all you uneducated buffoons~~most too lazy to use Spell Check. Ack.

Umm, so your going to let the Gestapo looking Police departments of today scan everyone’s Facebook page because they now have the credentials to pick out the psychopaths before a crime is committed. It’s just another example of the psycho-pathetic establishment, ah, umm, so, because, way of keeping good people and democratic movements like Occupy Wall Street from ruining their idea of making this country a two class system! Or, umm, maybe I need help? Naw, its them not me!

I started reading this assuming that the article would be about people who use more words than necessary, like “I hope I have made myself ABUNDANTLY clear,” or, “KINDLY tell your child…” That’s one of my pet peeves. Perhaps I was thinking “pompous” rather than “psychotic.”

This article is fairly useless as it is. It needs to be more in-depth.

I wonder how much of this is due to years of incarceration in a dull, routineless, government-managed institution. That’s gotta be a big factor in how the subjects respond to the investigation by these egg-headed experts from the universities– probably much bigger factor than anything inherent in the “criminal” mind. But the criminals whose minds they really need to study are in Washington DC, not on the prison yard. What surprises would turn up if the eggheaded intellectuals turned their spotlight on control-freak bureaucrats and the politicians who sponsor them.

Very revealing article. As many commentators have stated here, it is fascinating how linguistic researchers come up with new linkages between communication and psychology, in this case, between speech and criminal profiling. However, concerning the concept of “disfluencies” as a psychopathic clue, one must exert caution with people whose primary language is not the native language. In our case, many non-English native spearkers exhibit a lot of “disfluencies” in their communication because they are mentally translating between languages.Depending on their English mastery level and experience, the “disfluencies” may be more or less marked. Do psychopaths show “disfluencies” in their speech? According to the research, yes. Are people who show “disfluencies” psychopaths, definitely no.

They always drop their ‘ings … comin, goin, thinkun, lookin, doin fuckin …..and they say things for e.g. to the brother in law who came on a family holiday and was leaving to go home “Glad you enjoyed MY holiday” …. its always all about themselves, the pathalogical Narcissistic psychopath. …. Oh yes! Now I really know what he meant when he used to say “the other perspective’ … that was his Mr. Hyde perspective….ewwww

I think this article is absurd. Not the content, but the suggestion that a status post on someone’s Facebook page may play a part in condemning them. Yes, certain trends may appear in psychopaths’ speech patterns, but then again outliers exist. Furthermore, many of those speech patterns are as common as anything. “So” and “Because” is used a lot just on a regular basis, as well as the disfluencies. I do not believe that something as important as a person’s sanity should be judged on something as varied, or unreliable, as speech patterns.

Polititions use all 4 of those words all the time.

psychopath people humm. I think “because” or any other words would make them psychopath. I mean you use those words their part of speech, its often use in reasoning, and reasoners who would most likely start with because are not psychopaths. and, Adolf Hitler for instance, he’s a linguistic type of man, a great orator.he can use other words to justify or start his analogy. they’re just probably similar because of how their mind works.

100% bullshit……people really believe anything don’t they.

Interesting study, but I think to using thuis to determine criminal potential is like going back to phrenology.

Absolutely outrageous example of pseudoscience. And an even better example of the keystone cop/surveillance society engendered by this pernicious hokum. (One might take a few moments—or, who knows? maybe a whole hour!—to consult Feynman on the dangers of monkeying with the basic tenets of scientific inquiry. Speech patterns in “psychopaths”? Please…Even the irony-free dupes who nod along with crap like this would be able to notice the hilarious coincidence that the “patterns” identified in this pop/entertainment reduction of the dubious study describe cop-talk itself nearly perfectly. And, umm, if you think pigeon-holers from the government cruising FaceBook is for your good, well…hmmm. What are you going to do when their speech pattern recognition algorithms pick out Zuckerman himself as a nut?
P.S. It’s truly disappointing that a company heretofore pretty good at delivering an online dictionary has to resort to this base agitprop to pay the bills. Why not just charge more for the service and leave the carnival-barking to talk-radio, pulpits and Washington press conferences—where it belongs?

Im sorry but I do not agree, I say ummmm and so and because all the time, but then again I made straight F’s in my vocabulary and English classes, as for being a potential criminal I think actually searching for people like this is unproductive and false.

Usually you can just look into their eye’s and know.

Actually you should be more focused on sleeping disorders…

“or potential criminals.”

So if I use the um or uh in my speech, then I’m a psychopath?? Nice.

I wonder how many psychopaths are running Wall Street …….

Do people get paid to write this rubbish? Of course they either try explaining a logical reason why they HAD to do it or feel guilty and try and find God for forgiveness, I think they are BOTH psychopaths! They could both do it again and justify it or ask for forgiveness – again!

“Oh interesting read” ” wow now I know how to watch out for this psychos.” are you people serious? Although the fact of using clues to interpret if a person is dangerous or not is very clever. I was expecting somewhere along the lines of “body language” or something like that. Not words like umm, uh, and so. Everybody has a speech pattern and uses those phrases as well. So if you’re telling me to rely on just 3 words to figure someone else I find that ridiculous. I am 14 years have actually dealt with mental people and will not fall this bull shit.

Uh, umm, I don’t know that to say so…

Uh… My friends call me a psychopath, and this kind of describes me… that’s awkward…

Uhh umm, ya, so, um, this caught my attention because, uh, well if i ,umm, ever talk to a ,uhh, psychopath, umm, i want to know before they ,uhh, kill me, yea. Lol

I have considerable doubts with all of this.

As a psychotic, I go out of my way to be fluent; I speak casually without speaking too slowly. Not only does it help to articulate, but it allows the maintenance of an almost hypnotic prosody. Disfluency is relatively uncommon among us. It is an insult to the self to have to fill in what should be ominously coherent.

Keep in mind that the criminals were self-reporting. People in prison are desperate to salvage their egos. What better way is there than by answering questions in a manner intended to frighten? Those of lesser fortitude – with the impression that forgiveness and salvation are even relevant – find God.

I know it makes you normals feel better to think there might be, but there is no way to accurately profile psychotics. To make any such claim to the contrary is irresponsible and sensationalistic. Remember also that the term psychotic does not automatically imply that the person termed is dangerous. The actual ratio of psychotics to normals in the free population is much higher than the ratio of psychotics to normals who are incarcerated. While misfortune is an equal opportunity hazard, it is less likely to affect the prepared. As psychotics habitually rehearse their activities – to satisfy their vanity primarily – they are less likely to be caught.

We are everywhere, and we are inclined to hate each other far more than we would ever seek to victimize you. You are less of a challenge by comparison. For those of us aware of our condition, psychosis is the greatest facet of our identity, and to encounter another is as a disturbing, twisted, and perverse mirror. There is one significant exception: two psychotics who love each other share a bond you could simply never comprehend. Yes, we feel. It is rare and generous, like a monsoon.

While I could talk about me all day, being misanthropic, your continued attention is less than desirable. I am sure an American Idol rerun or other vapid form of entertainment would have been more satisfying to you. Thank you, however, for these few minutes of your time – tiny pieces of you that now belong to me.

This article makes a lot of generalizations and doesn’t seem to provide much new information.

Of course the way people speak can clearly represent their actions, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as simple as this article portrays it. Whether or not the article correctly portrays the research is an interesting question I wish I could pursue. I hope that this article is an oversimplification as often seen in the journalistic industry in regards to scientific research (similar to the whole hype about neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light in a particular study possibly “turning everything we know about physics upside-down”.)

But, back on the subject of speech patterns. I, and many other people I’m sure, commonly evaluate the speech patterns of other people to establish their personalities, motives, and emotions. However, there’s a lot more than just speech that we go off of. We also look at body language: gestures, expressions, posture, and movement. In the theater these four things combined with voice are the tools an actor uses to portray a particular character. Similarly, in real life these five things are those which we watch to read a persons character.

In a span of one minute observing a stranger you can deduce quite a bit from their personality if you pay attention to all of these things. In the span of 10 seconds you can tell if they’re extroverted or introverted. In the span of 2 seconds you can tell if they’re hostile or non-hostile.

It would be great if law-enforcement officers had this in their toolset, but I don’t think it’s necessarily proper for them to go out looking for people who fit certain criteria. At that point we start verging on an omnipotent government, which is but one step away from a totalitarian one.

-Mator

This explains a lot. It sounds exactly like my son’s father. He’s a clinical sociopath. He’s never killed anyone, however, I supposed if he’s pushed far enough, he very well could be.

Very narrow-minded article.

Now i know how to find phycopaths

Psychopaths don’t differ too far from your regular selfish individual. It is after all, logical, but the immoral-sort don’t make the best friends. And having the police reading your facebook messages doesn’t make you safe, it keeps you under control.

Yea, right. Does this make me a psychopath? I don’t empathize with others at all, and I have an irregular speech pattern. So to say.

I read some of these comments stating that this article is devoid of merit, and I can’t help but shake my head in utter frustration.

People claim that, if a person is raised by psychopaths, he will talk like them, and should therefore not be judged on his form of speech. This argument, however, fails to address the fact that a person raised by psychopaths will not only talk like them but act like them, as well. They will do what their parents do, and if that just happens to be killing a man (a crime common to psychopaths) then they can be thus classified.

Others claim that atheists won’t talk about religion, and people who aren’t comfortable sharing their emotions won’t show guilt or sadness. I agree that atheists obviously won’t talk about religion, but it is important to remember that speaking of religion was only a generic example, and nothing specific. It is also true that there are people out there who choose to hide their feelings from others, myself included. However, there is a limit — a breaking point where no amount of human strength can act as a dam to your swelling emotions; and if murdering someone in cold blood isn’t that breaking point for you, then you’re either not human or a psychopath.

The main argument is that plenty of people use the words “because,” “so,” “umm,” or “uhh” and that this does not mean that you are a psychopath. It is imperative to recall to mind that the article did not claim everyone who used these words were psychopaths. It merely hinted that psychopaths generally tend to use these words MORE OFTEN than most people, and not that they were the only ones who used them at all.

Some denounce this test as a “pencil-and-paper” generalization of the human mind. However, keep in mind that these test are administered by PSYCHOLOGISTS, who have a degree in PSYCHOLOGY, a science that has studied the human mind for a substantial amount of time. The tests were probably not as simple as “how many times did you use the word ‘because’ ?” More than likely, it took into account many different factors not included in this article, probably because they were decided against as a test of insanity, and thus thought irrelevant.

Still others claim that the clinicians who administered these tests may have had biases of their own; for example, if one of the psychopaths reminded them of a high school bully. While this may be true in some cases, it cannot be simply assumed that all the psychologists were reminded by the same kind of person of the same kind of event. Wide-spread surveys (yes, they did interview more than a few criminals) were created for just this purpose: to avoid the random bias and find the average, what happens the highest number of times, and thus create a general “best-fitting line.”

I did not have time to read each and every single comment, and could therefore not provide a counterargument to all the misinformed assertions. However, please keep the factors I have provided in mind when criticizing a well-formulated article next time

What I’m gathering here as the general consensus based on the comments I’m reading:

Apples are red, therefore all things red are apples.

Come on people.

I think it is a crock of shit! You may be able to tell someone is arrogant and or narssasitic based on this but my 10 year old uses Um a lot in his sentances and he used to blame everyone else in the world for what he did. Does that mean he is a psychopath. No It means he is narssasitic and he does not see himself as ever being wrong. There is always a rational reason for everything that is a defence mechanism known as Rationalization and even Alcoholics use that are they all psychopaths Hell no. This is just plain rediculous. If a person kills or harms someone for no reason with no remorse then they are a psychopath not if they talk like they are stuck on themselves. That is different I agree that some of them may talk that way because they are both narssasistic and a psycho however I know a lot of people who do the same thing and they are not psycho. You got to be kidding. Oh here is a way that they can tell though people who commit murder have a smaller prefronal cortex in their brain so get a brain scan of your inmates and you will see a pattern I will believe. Damn that shit was dumb that is like the doctor who told my aunt that she has parkison’s disease because she did not swing her arm when she walked. How rediculous does that sound EVERYONE walks and talks a little different.

Awesome study. I guess that for common people like ourselves it opens up a new door towards really getting to know the people around us.

Uh oh… this seems to suggest that pretty much everyone in my law class is a psychopath. They’re always talking about basic needs and using the words ’so’ and ‘because’

I hope they use these data wisely. I would not want to see people jumping to conclusions about the way that people speak. No healthy to observe peoples behavior to closely when you don’t have the training.
Never to be used in a social context. Researches in all areas just publish what they find and don’t appear to give a thought to what the consequences might be. Will they be to better or to the worse??

When a woman is feeling horny and wants to be eaten out, there should be a special pin that they wear, so we don’t waste our time pursuing women that are not in the mood for sex. This will result in a faster turn-around time, and a substantial increase in the amount of women being serviced. If you agree, write to me at dickshunery.com

When are people going to realize that psychology isn’t science.

This article is so vapid and flawed, I’m wondering how anyone could take it seriously. For one, the “psychopaths” interviewed are already identified as such, so whatever they utter cannot flag them as psychopaths. This is specious, or circular, reasoning. Not only that, many people utter those same words and expressions; so, this group could not in any way represent a control group or valid sampling of people manifesting psychopath-specific speech. Finally, why the irrelevant remark about Facebook? How does it pertain at all to the content of the story? This article represents fallacious amateurism at its worst. I won’t take the bait to read this site’s “stories” again.

This is one of the most absurd articles I have read, and just further ingrains into my head the ignorant ideologies that people use to say “Oh you’re different.” In the poem “Much Madness Is Divinest Sense”, by Emily Dickinson, she delves into “society’s” meanings of what ’sane’ and ‘insane’ are, and what she writes is the truth. I acknowledge the fact that people are trying to figure out criminal minds and appreciate it, but basing facts on how one speaks is ludicrous in its own right. What next, basing facts on how one eats, sleeps, blinks … I do not believe in other humans trying to undestand the human mind, because they ARE human, so their minds are already biased and contorted and can’t possibly form the right conclusions about other HUMANS and what they are feeling, let alone what they are. Plus this article indoctrinates into the readers that one should judge somebody’s personality and who they are by just how many umms, uhhhs, so’s, and because’s they use. Who wrote this?

Sadly lacking credible qualifiers. I guess Cornell’s psychology dept needs money so they’re allowing half baked theories to hit mass media. We’re talking giving millions of people a sense of licensure to judge people’s goodness and normalcy here. How irresponsible of Cornell. There have got to be dozens of other reasons people might tend to use hmm and so. It’s like saying psychopaths complained of more rashes and webMD listed 30 conditions associated with rashes; or they had more freckles than regular criminals. Rash theories presented to mass peoples are no more than discrimination in its earliest stages.

It’s frankly a little disturbing how many people are misinterpreting this article to basically mean that if you say “so/because/uh/um” more frequently than the average person then this will work as conclusive evidence that you are a psychopath.

First or all, notice that we are not dealing with a biconditional statement: ‘psychopaths use “so/because/uh/um” more frequently than others’ does NOT imply that ‘people who use “so/because/uh/um” more frequently than others are psychopaths’.

Secondly, if this observation will indeed be used by some law enforcement entities, it will -at best- be included as a single parameter in the profiling. In other words, if the person being investigated has raised several flags indicating suspicious behavior and ALSO matches the speech patterns described in the article above, then this may lead the investigators to maintain (or even sharpen) focus on that individual — but as a discrete observation it really doesn’t say a whole lot about whether or not the person is a psychopath.

Lex,
thank you for the thoughtful reply. You bring up a lot of good questions to ponder. I am a fan of Meyers-Briggs. I also think the diagnosis of a psychopath should not be taken lightly, nor without the plethora of variables one’s personality is composed of.

I also find this rather amusing, in that I am a Buddhist, and also somewhat of a grammar snob, I get very annoyed with how much the word “so” is used in our “right speech.” Even our most realized teachers use it while teaching. A lot.

In their case, I think it is probably a need to fill verbal space…
I sure hope Pema Chodron is not a psychopath, or I’m in big trouble.

I find it hard to believe that police would do searches on facebook and craigslist for people who use “um” or “because” a lot. That seem’s a little far fetched.

This study is bogus and flawed.

OMG!!! I am involved in a long-term study of POLICE who are in the community dealing with citizens. When we applied [and, eventually discarded] the research to which you refer here, we found less than 2% of the officers were NOT” psychopaths.” It was uncanny, and you can DIY the test yourself providing you are an acquaintance of a policeman [study did not include women = another study did]. Just ask :[1] ‘Why did you originally think you could be successful as a cop?’ [2]‘ Are you a successful cop, and [3] upon what do you base your opinion? Chances are you will need a recording device to count the astonishing numbers of language behaviors and abberrances, mentioned herein. I was a cop in India.

that is way off cause i use so and uh a lot when i talk and i am pretty sure i am NOT a psychopath

Anyone ever see minority report? I’ll bet psychopaths prefer metaphor’s to similes… Ha, looking through facebook for criminals, not evidence, but to actually find potential criminals — let’s talk about rounding up a city block to find Jews. I especially think this is lame “because” many of these things seem to suggest low emotional intelligence and psychopathic tendencies among introverts (the description of a psychopath sounds like most people with p.h.ds in something other than the social “sciences”). Emotional intelligence and studies like this are ostensibly a joke but when put in the wrong hands (like our blogger’s), under the guise of science they incite ridiculous conclusions. The worst part is that this sort of ignorant profiling is seen throughout history with usually horrible conclusions yet it remains popular, if only through other forms.

anyone who wants to find out more about sociopaths needs to read: Without Conscience -The disturbing world of the psychopaths among us–Robert Hare Ph.D.

For those that speak Spanish, listen to Hugo Chavez and it becomes clear that his speech characteristics are exactly as described.
It’s really no surprise, as psychiatrists have long recognized that in fact he is a “psycho”, just confirmation from another angle.

Ted Bundy was a psychopath who must have said, “Hello,” a lot, considering that he got 40+ women to go with him so he could kill them. I’d be concerned about the true selves of greeters at Wal-Mart.

How absurd. Do people really have this much time on their hands? We all use the terms “Um, uh” and we all focus on money as means to get by. Who would profile someone based on their facebook posts? Are you serious? I better look out then, because I uh, posted some, uh, crazy things on Facebook.

Okay. People, stop having a spazz about it, of course everyone says “So, and Um” and all that stuff, but they mean about when people are talking about their crime, they are more likely to use those words.

OMG! This is epic! Post mystery related stuff more!

Interesting yet still useful!

Although interesting, I don’t see how it will help. For one thing, (although I can understand the government monitoring craigslist) I would feel it as an invasion of my privacy if someone monitors my facebook page just to look for keywords. They already spy on our phone calls and emails, and has anyone used google earth? They can look in on us visually if they want, and they probably do.
Second, the last thing I want is the swat team bursting through my front door thinking I’m a potential psychopath just because I use umm, uhh, because, so, and so on.

Note to Clara Graph who seems to think this is unjustly profiling.
Member of the ACLU? Regardless, you have never lived through
a psycho/sociopathic encounter, and I pray have a brush just close
enough to one to change your closed mind.

Most of the dangerous socios in the world are MEN. Most police
are MEN…most victims are females who had better have their
radar on for such. You won’t get help from the justice system,
unless perhaps if they find a bloody body.

yo sup

Umm… I’m not a Psychopath because if I am I would talk like a Psychopath but I don’t so I’m not a Psychopath.

i find it pretty ridiculous. in today’s society young people always say things like “Like” “so” “cause”

This is scary. But I use um pretty often and i stutter between my words. But that’s not cause im a psychopath. I’m jus another teen. lol and i guess if they wanna stalk my FB for my safety, s’all good

Having the police investigate profiles is pointless. Does one not have as much time as they need to plan out a post of any kind and correct anything they see as a flaw before posting said message? For example, (even though I could very well possibly have the FBI come barging in my house in approx. 30 min.) I could be a psychopath myself and neither “so” or “because” have previously been stated in this comment. I for one would think that a psychopath would be very eloquent in his/her speech, for if they were insane enough to commit mass homicide, would they not need a method to sustain innocence or an alibi to continue on with their lives? Also, take into consideration the mind set of a sociopath. In the public eye, they could be anybody whatsoever; the neighbor down the street, the cashier at your favorite restaurant, or the coworker in the cubicle adjacent to yours (if you work in an office building). They would seem to be just like any of your other friends, however, when they are out of sight, they could have a slew of people under their back yard, possibly used as fertilizer for their garden. Thus, if someone you have known for years turns out to be a psychopath…actually, I forgot where I was going with this, but I still disagree with this article, given the examples I have stated.

WHAT A GREAT STARTING POINT. NOT THOROUGH OR CONCLUSIVE ENOUGH SO I INTEND TO START @ GOOGLE THEN SEE WHERE IT MAY LEAD ME. HUMMM THIS COULD BE FUN THAT IS IF IT DOESN’T SEEM TO PEG ME TOO CLOSELY. GEEZ, SHALL I START DOWN THIS ROAD? SOUNDS KINDA SCARY.

weeeeeel ah thanc dat dis iz som amazang stuf.

I’m sorry, but what’s the point of this article? Never mind the fact that t\mental health professionals haven’t used the term ‘psychopath’ since the 1980s. Are we supposed to conclude that someone “whose self-reported tests reveal them to be psychopaths” tends to say ‘um’ a lot that anyone who says “um” a lot is a sociopath? Well then, apparently, President Obama is a sociopath. Last time I checked, though, that wasn’t listed in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders as one of the criteria for antisocial personality disorder (aka, sociopathy).

Please excuse the typos.

The grammar for the headline to this article is improper; please correct the subject/verb agreement. It’s bad enough that people read grammatically incorrect statements in news articles and on facebook. It’s horrible to see such a thing on a website for a dictionary and thesaurus…Thanks

So because I use the words ’so’ and ‘because’ when describing things I do, I may be a psychopath? It seems that this thread of thought holds a lot of potential, but at its current stage, I doubt it will really be good for much but for making the general public paranoid.

Guys, the police aren’t going to search facebook for serial killers, but find a suspect and then check their facebook. We’re not all that interesting and they wouldn’t waste their time in doing so. I also thought this article was going to be a lot more interesting. I basically learned that that one kid in my english class who uses word fillers like umm and like is a serial killer…yeah right. I get that it is an example, but let’s find something more interesting in our research before publishing cool-sounding articles. kthanks.

Police sieving Craigslist and Facebook will be like the neighbor of the psychopath who gets interviewed on TV. It will be a case of subsequent justification. “I lived next to him for twenty years. I never actually saw him do anything wrong, but I just KNEW that there was something funny about him.” After the police “know” who the serial killer is, they’ll trot out this study and prove how industrious and correct they are.

And, actually, come to think of it, this article does sound kinda ridiculous, i mean… get a grip! if this is true then i think that some certain people working in the psycology field just may have become a bit paranoid…

lolz

lolz

hi-ishness

Uh-oh. Maybe my next note here will be coming from a police cell.

I have several characteristics that denote unreliable, untruthful, psychotic people:
1. I can’t keep eye-contact with a questioner for any length of time. I was taught not to stare at people–though I guess there may be a difference between staring and just looking at someone for a long time.
2. If I can’t remember or concentrate on something, I close my eyes to concentrate better.
3. If I’m groping for a memory or a word, I’ll hem, haw, er, whatever.

I blame this on failing age, but who knows? Maybe I’m actually a closet psychopath. Aargh!

“A psychopath…they”? This is an alarming grammatical error for a language and usage website.

Another example of modern authorities utilizing forms of sHitler’s methods, of stereotyping and generalizing specifically in this case, in order to have (poor) excuses to lock people up. Something similar to the Minority Report may soon be upon us, people.
It’s quite funny because a lot of the commentators here make more sense than the silly fool(s) that wrote this article.
Drinking too much shitty coffee makes for shitty theories. Find a different aspect of humanity to study over, one that will not cause people to needlessly harass each other over. I pity the introverted school kids.

A psychologist would know that self-report questionnaires are not reliable indicators of the truth, especially in a situation where criminals might think that they will get sympathy or favorable treatment if they make themselves appear to be sick or demented.
Furthermore, “interpretations” of interview content might be confounded by belief that the individual being interviewed is in fact a psychopath.
After reading this article, it might seem to you that you and most of your friends are psychopathic. Take it with a lot of skepticism, and, if you’ve never studied research methodology, you’d be better looking into it before coming to quick conclusions.

What does government “protection” have to do with violating peoples’ privacy on social networks? Plethora of people get upset on social networks and make many inappropriate comments “psychopath comments”, thus making the violation of privacy in these networks to search for psychopaths ridiculous and nonsense.

“Psychopaths in the study spoke of basic needs like food and money twice as much as the other subjects in the study, and they also use more disfluencies (phrases like “uh” or “umm”) to break up their speech.”

Sounds like the OWS “protestors”….

It makes sense that a group with a different pattern of brain development would be prone to using language slightly differently…but what if it’s another anomaly causing them to speak unusually? That could be bad news for traditionally poorly understood groups like Aspies, who, while being at least as empathetic and law-abiding as neurotypicals, are known for their esoteric way of processing both language and social situations.
Or it could even be cultural, perhaps on a more localized level than the law enforcement would be trained to consider. I know my own family has its own micro-dialect consisting of everything from divergently evolved word meanings to wholly unique “disfluency” manifestations.

Uh, uh, erre, uh, hummm…

It’s nice that this gave a few people a chance to show off their grandiloquence but most of you seem to have missed the point and come across as quite paranoid. We all say so and um and because, nobody’s saying we don’t. What they are saying is that psycopaths tend to use these words more often. It is part of profiling, not the whole box and dice. And I bet, if need be, you’d be happy to let them use this kind of psychological insight if someone you loved was found dead or missing and there was a chance of nailing the perpetrator.

Millions of people use disfluencies, does that mean millions of people are psychopaths?

This is a fascinating area of study, but it appears to pigeon hole a vast amount of people.

I consider myself relatively intelligent with a pretty good grasp of English, but every other word I say is “so”, “ummm”, or “errr”. If this puts me in the psychopath category I may as well book myself into Broadmore.

The manner in which your headline is written has always been problematical with me: “Can you tell a psychopath by the way they speak?”

The word “psychopath” is singular, but he/she is referred to later in the sentence as “they.” This is very common usage, and one sees it everywhere, but it’s irritating to those of us who get picky at such inconsistencies. End of soapbox oration.

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The frequency and context in which that they say “um”, “so”, “because” or other such utterances was the point, not whether or not they use it. Psychos are ideal for lots of jobs, they are not all crims.

I do not agree with this, and feel this is a joke.

Arcanis on October 27, 2011 at 5:30 pm

great, another way to make some people feel more alone

you are very correct

Do not trust any word from nations with armies that kill and mislead for profit.. criminology… Just words to justify means to an end in an illogical context… Money changers have corrupted this word, the church a taken over by psychopaths… Whats funny is the merchants challenge the bankers that took over the church and state through manipulating the masses.

Einstein constantly misquoted…

He believed in god, within his essays.. something greater. The immaterial world of thought and knowledge….. If one has no body but still existed what really would invest someone to create a hostility towards another.

If people were true Followers of Christ they would have mastered their mind but garner their actions to the straight and narrow. True liberty is in a free mind but this world is in mental bondage and told what to think. Majority of people I come across cannot socialize in a proper manner towards the opposite sex or even the same sex. Have been conditioned to behave completely retarded.

Keep up the lies (Reich) and keep manipulating the petty minded masses. There tossed a way like dog food with the fear that is read that enters their mind. More like a psychopathic society that forces peoples obedience rather then communication or uses tools like force or money or evil intelligence to make people submit there mind/will to their ideals. Could look at world war II(money changer manipulation) or the systematic eradication of white peop1/II through immigration. Five hundred years of dog breeding experiments to breed intelligent dogs. Greek period of human breeding experiments. Could go into the reduction of education in the west to a lower and lower standard and near impossibility for others whereas immigrants actually have a higher standard coming here but lower the societal standard? WTF? Evil is time is to conditioning. I will make you hate what is good for you and love what is bad for you. In a sense that is demo~n~cracy. Intelligence is very well refined to the breed of an individual as long as they pertain to aspiring to gather knowledge. However mislead this society gets, it still roams about with no purpose. Society is getting dumber for a reason and it is an evil one at that. Lets look at Telus, destroyed a union, government failed to protect that actual workers that built the infrastructure then replaced them all with foreigners that just do maintenance. Then a recession so many of these individuals lost there homes or committed suicide and have there houses bought by individuals that just arrived and are given corporate or forgivable bank loans.That in itself is an aggressive act or hostile action in a nation… The crown is assumed to be the bank since all state heads were cast out or killed by the marauding mobs by there underhanded of manipulation of history or news/data. Three thousand years of money changing fraud, Einstein mentioned something about to continue to do something a certain way is insanity if it continues to fail, therefore it is logical to assume they will do it again and are. Its about time they go imo. We could look at how petty and stupid women are in society and have no actual ability or skills to effective be productive. More suited to being submissive slaves to petty ideals, fearful feral creatures. As any intelligent women have been slain in the past.There are diminishing and tyrannic persona to society that do not understand conditioning environment and breeding dynamics. If money never existed, knowledge would be the fortay of development and communication. Merit of ones person governs whether they have a position not some seductive eel or irrational mind chosen because it is irrational and illogical. Instead they sell there sons to death and there daughters to prostitution. Which only exacerbates the condition of a society not valuing knowledge and protecting there community. Like wise the community that I am in, was corporate funded and then waves upon waves of immigrants began arriving then crime soared and now there is police everywhere. Interesting way to destroy a community. Which is only creating a rat race that worships money/material on top of that the look of people is disgusting from once beautiful now to some genetic monstrosities. I am not for vanity but I do think caring for oneself some manner is important. Not sure if this has to do with the toxins men. Allies lost the war and this the result of children running around the earth creating party planet earth. Liberty of action is lawlessness. However the liberty of mind is always acknowledge and wanted as it contributes well to a society. rather then protecting life and the things that matter. Funny slaves will build there killers massive homes but not look to the man that could help them and build them a home. What is tyranny if one does not act accordingly to have conscience of their actions or responsibility?

Near the end of time, men will seek death and not find it. wake up and start reflecting and observing not in the now but of all times and things… Humanity is being played.

demonizing of men from media, misleading of women.

Social norms will kill you, and your mind is far more important then vanity. If humanity is ever to wake up it needs to protect knowledge. For all the relevant knowledge to create all that has ever been created could be symbolically and written into a book less than half the thickness of say the bible. Nature hides nothing but reveals everything. Everything is from nature… Who watches who>?

This last generation is the most fucked up of all… completely dead to thinking.

WIll Norris I also agree with you, so tired of pseudo science of nature that uses contradicting themes and biases.

Artemirr chill. We’re talking about linguistic profiling. Nobody’s getting played, human being’s ability to think is alive and well, and sciences are seriously advancing. Everything is fine – we’re just complaining about how the author presented the study, or the study itself.

Interesting! Still need to beg your forgiveness, as it is not that easy to meet someone and find the person a little off. A psycho… is of different breed…–a genuinely sleek, smooth, suave and a polished and such without giving any hint of anything when they are engaged in something.

However, from now on must look out for there speech pattern/clue.

Incidentally, many such people are the holder in high echelon authoritative rank and all.

Thank you for the knowledgeable, interesting and informative article.

There are many books about this subject. Some of them are written by old FBI employees.

Oh no! I know plenty of people who use casual phrases, but not all the time.

Now that I think about it, I only use yhe word ‘um’ when trying to describe a dream or remember lyrics to a song.

sometimes I’ll listen to my older sister or two of my younger sisters and notice they use the word ‘like’ a lot. and it’s not when they’re describing something. why is that I wonder? :’

Again, they’re trying to shove crap down our throats. The government isn’t actually trying to track down psychopaths on social networks, they’re just making pathetic excuses to keep us under surveillance. The government cares only about power and complete control. I’m not saying to become extremely paranoid and don’t trust anyone, I’m just saying, know who your friends are and try reading between the lines.

Guess Im a pyscho, two things I check off with me…Hey sweety!! guess what I found out!!!

Research is flawed if they’re only examining criminals. What about those who aren’t criminals?
Are we going to now define everybody with one or two too many so’s & because’s as psychopaths based on this flaw.

They seriously shouldn’t be making grand generalised statements like this when they haven’t done their research properly; period.

interesting article!!!!

wow! that means a load of my friends ”cuckoo”

I feel like a psychopath! However I don’t think that using “so” or “because” is a really good way to detect pyschopaths. What about people who just explain a lot like teachers? (Don’t do that because…., or I will visit my in-laws so…)

Note that in this article the use of the words mentioned is within the contexts of criminals discussing their crimes; not within everyday conversation.

To me if you type umm, ah, or huh, while discussing a topic other than those (mutter)utterances your some kind of____path, but I’m not sure what kind that would be though.

The psychopath in my extended family has always done something when speaking that I find unnerving and inappropriate. She laughs at the end of just about every sentence she utters. And there is often nothing funny about what she has just said… Therefefore, her laughter is totally inappropriate. What is this about?

usually, social paths are kind of overly peppy and hyper, and it scares me. one time, a super peppy guy that kept making horrible jokes asked me for directions to the nearest interstate, but i asked his name, and i turned around and saw a wanted poster of him so i went to the bathroom and called the cops.

Main difference is : person talking to them would feel that psycho is not responding on the presented logic or thought (basically he would be lying or will base his argument on his own logic to confuse) and you will feel pathetic explaining him your logic but he would irritate and repeat his argument in response so that no further pressure is built on him amid this confusion filled with frustration in you NOT him. Basically, you in sometime you will feel and look aggressive and he would look like poor (& stupid) simple human being who is unable to get on with others’ level of communication and understanding of situations/ feelings. He achieves his goal through this strategy which is almost impossible to beat.

A psychopath is emotionally and socially disabled and their life is a lie so their speech is planned. It will often go around in circles and at times not make a lot of sense. They will use a lot of words to say something but not really say anything. It’s not spontaneous and when questioned, particularly about what they think and feel, some will use um and ah excessively to give them time to sort through their collection of other peoples thoughts and personalities for answers. Some will pretend to be vague instead, while others will suddenly have to do something. They cannot engage in normal conversations unless others around them prop them up which often happens. I once had a psychopath ask me to teach him how to make conversation like it was something that decorated his environment rather than something used to communicate with others. People with an abundance of empathy will, without realising it, add words to their conversation so it makes sense, or create a diversion so they are comfortable or they’ll make excuses for them like he/she can’t remember, or aren’t well. Psychopaths depend completely on other people emotionally and socially to survive and they will send out intimidating signals, or play victim to make sure people around them take care of their emotional and social needs. One thing that is more obvious in their speech is the lack of responsibility they take for anything at all.

Why are the scientists focused on so-called psychopaths? Seems like killers and violent folks, as reports in the news media show, come from all walks of life, and kill or do violence for all kinds of reasons, like the kid bullied one time too many, or the jealous husband, or the disgruntled worker, or the wife seeking a large life insurance policy, or druggie seeking drug money, or the racists…. Are they all “psychopaths”? If not, if psychopaths are only a small fraction of violent offenders, then why are they the focus?

Paige, i think you got it right — this is all a ruse to scare and get people to accept more and more government intrusion into our private lives and trampeling our Constitutional rights!

I’m gone to tell my little brother, that he should also visit this blog on regular basis to get updated from latest news update.

Phychopaths always lie and use people like a sponge they have no internal feelings at all.They are greedy and attention seeks ,a type of competition for attention and show off and say or do anything to be the center.If they hurt some one they always say its a accident and have no remorse . When some one comes to visit they have to be the They have tp be center of attention . They set things up so you trip or fall. They are really jealous of children and seem to want to be small for the attention .When someone dies it does not affect them .when you try to talk about feelings they change the subject about something abstract . They always talk about just plain bullshit . They like spy , peek out windows and watch every move every one makes.They put women down and choose to run with someone who has low iQ.they like to bully, they are extreme cowards.They like to order others around and are affended when people don’t flatter and tell all kinds of phony stuff they want , they do not care if it’s bull . They want excitement all the time want some kind drama usually to distract from a scheme he has going.

[...] focus of the language of pychopaths is that of verbal irony and deception. The psychopaths who were interviewed tended to use a lot of causal  phrases like “so” and [...]

Interesting. I was hoping to find this type of information. I’ve always wanted to have certain ongoing text conversations “analyzed” or read by a psychologist, out of curiosity. If be happy to offer them to a study if anyone is interested. After years of interactions, I know something is very wrong and see many interesting patterns.