Psychopaths' Storytelling: Pronouns & Verb Tense Usage, Lecture notes of Storytelling

Download Psychopaths' Storytelling: Pronouns & Verb Tense Usage and more Lecture notes Storytelling in PDF only on Docsity! Psychopathic Storytelling 1 Psychopathic Storytelling: The Effect of Valence on Self and Time in Psychopathic Language Use Honors Thesis Presented to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Social Science Program of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Research Honors Program by Rebecca Morrow December 2008 Research Advisor: Jeffrey Hancock Psychopathic Storytelling 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Jeffrey Hancock, my thesis advisor, for his guidance and wisdom. Without him this research would not be possible. I would also like to thank Michael Woodworth for providing the data for this study. In addition, I would like to thank Paul Rayson for creating the Wmatrix corpus analysis program. Thank you Bruce Lewenstein for providing me with guidance throughout my academic career at Cornell University. I would like to thank my family who have supported me throughout my lifetime and inspired a passion for new ideas and research. Psychopathic Storytelling 5 Main Attributes of the Psychopath Psychopaths are most commonly identified by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCl-R), a 20-item instrument (Hare & Neumann, 2006). Scores on the PCL-R are determined by semistructured interviews and information from files. Each of the 20 items is scored on a 3-point scale from 0-2, so scores can range from 0-40. The criteria to diagnose psychopaths in North America are scores above 30 on the PCL-R. Some of the items are ―glibness/superficial charm … grandiose sense of self worth … pathological lying … lack of remorse or guilt … shallow affect … juvenile delinquency‖ (Hare & Neumann, p. 63), which are cornerstone descriptions of psychopathic personality. PCL-R scores can be analyzed in terms of underlying factors. In 1991, the PCL-R was divided into two factors: Factor 1, Interpersonal/Affective; and Factor 2, Social Deviance (Hare & Neumann). In 2003, Hare divided the PCL-R analyses into four factors: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial. Psychopaths are known for their egocentricity and inability to love (Lykken, 1995). They have trouble forming deep attachments to other people, and according to Levenson, this ―trivialization of the other,‖ needs to be researched further in psychopathy studies (qtd. in Blackburn, 2006, p. 50). Evidence also shows that psychopaths are motivated by thrill seeking and sadistic interests (Porter & Woodworth, 2006). Psychopaths show more violence when they commit sexual crimes (Gretton, McBride, Lewis, O‘Shaugnesssy, & Hare, 1994 qtd. in Porter & Woodworth, 2006), and take advantage of others more often in their crimes (Forth & Kroner, 1995 qtd. in Porter & Woodworth). In addition, when psychopaths describe their crimes, they tend to reframe their experiences by shifting blame away from themselves, Psychopathic Storytelling 6 and describing their crimes as more reactive than police records did (Porter and Woodworth, 2005 qtd. in Porter and Woodworth, 2006). Another hallmark of the psychopathic personality is shallow affect, which can be seen in the ways they process emotional language differently from non-psychopaths. Hare found that psychopaths react less to emotional connotations of descriptions (Lykken, 1995). In another study, Hare compared psychopaths‘ and non-psychopaths‘ reaction times and brain- wave responses (event-related potentials or ERPs) to a word-identifying task. He found that non-psychopaths responded quicker to emotional words than neutral words than psychopaths did. Non-psychopaths also showed a greater difference the patterns of their ERPs than psychopaths did (Lykken). Psychopaths tend to misunderstand the connotative meanings in words, and when asked to group similar words together, psychopaths grouped words based on denotative meaning more often than non-psychopaths, who grouped words together based on connotative meaning (Blackburn, 2006). Psychopaths also have subdued responses to other people‘s distress. One study measured involuntary responses when subjects believed others received electric shocks, and they found that psychopaths had less involuntary responses than non-psychopaths (see Blair, Mitchell, & Blair, 2005). In another experiment, psychopaths showed less involuntary responses than controls when provoked by distressing images (Blair et al, 2005). Psychopaths specifically respond much less dramatically to negative stimuli than non- psychopaths. For example, Lykken performed a classic conditioning experiment by sounding a buzzer (the conditioned stimulus) then giving participants a safe but painful electric shock (the unconditioned stimulus). Sweating is the unconditioned response to the unconditioned stimulus, so Lykken wanted to examine the extent of the conditioned response to the buzzer. Psychopathic Storytelling 7 He found that when faced with an imminent threat of electric shock, psychopathic offenders show a significantly reduced conditioned response compared to non-psychopaths (Blair et. al, 2005). However, few studies examined the differences between psychopathic offenders‘ and non-psychopathic offenders‘ responses to positive stimuli. One study examined how differently valenced images affected the startle response in non-psychopaths, mixed offenders, and psychopathic offenders. The normal, mixed, and psychopathic groups did not differ in startle blink magnitude during neutral and positively valenced images, but psychopathic offenders displayed a significantly lower startle blink magnitude during negative images (Patrick, 2007). Language and Psychopaths Note that these studies analyzed psychopath‘s language processing, but few studies have examined the way psychopaths use language. Psychopaths have been found to produce more disfluencies, such as ―uh‖ or ―um,‖ compared to controls when discussing their murders, which suggests that retelling such an emotional story was uncomfortable for them (Woodworth, Hancock, and Porter, 2008). In one recent study examining language production, Kornet (2008) found when offenders speak about their murders, psychopaths produce fewer emotional references than non-psychopaths. Overall, psychopaths use emotional terms less frequently, and the emotional terms they use are more negatively valenced than controls (Kornet, 2008). These findings are consistent with psychopaths‘ shallow affect. What other personality traits unique to psychopaths might be reflected in their language use? One possibility is that psychopaths often display characteristics consistent with the narcissistic personality, such as an aggressive-sadistic personality style, self-love, arrogance, Psychopathic Storytelling 10 Research Questions/Empirical Hypothesis Given that psychopaths show a high co-morbidity with narcissism, and that narcissism is linked with higher rates of first person singular pronoun use, psychopaths should produce higher rates of personal pronouns and lower rates of other-oriented pronouns than controls. H1: Psychopaths will use first person singular pronouns (―I‖ ―me‖) more frequently than controls H2: Psychopaths will use first person plural pronouns (―we‖ ―us‖) less frequently than controls H3: Psychopaths will use third person singular personal pronouns such as (―he‖ ―she‖) less frequently than controls As noted above, psychological distancing is reflected in verb tense. If this is the case, both psychopaths and controls should produce more past tense verbs when describing negative stories in their past than during positive stories. Conversely, they should produce more present tense verbs when describing positive stories than during negative ones. H4a: In general, more past tense verbs should be used when describing negative events relative to positive events H4b: In general, more present tense verbs should be used when describing positive events relative to negative events Given that psychopaths tend to feel less guilt and show less remorse than controls, psychological distancing should be more salient in psychopathic language than in non- Psychopathic Storytelling 11 psychopathic language. Thus, psychopaths should use less past tense verbs when describing negative events and more present tense verbs during positive events. H5a: When describing negative events, psychopathic offenders will use more past tense verbs than controls. H5b: When describing positive events, psychopathic offenders will use less past tense verbs than controls. H6a: When describing negative events, psychopathic offenders will use less present tense verbs than controls. H6b: When describing positive events, psychopathic offenders will use more present tense verbs than controls. Psychopathic Storytelling 12 Methods Participants The data in this study originally comes from transcripts taken from violent offenders in two Canadian maximum security correctional facilities: one in British Columbia and the other in Nova Scotia. The transcripts were originally collected in 2000 for a previous study (see Woodworth & Porter, 2002). In this study, psychopaths are defined as having a score of 25 or higher on the pCL-R, and this sample includes 51 offenders: 13 psychopathic and 38 non-psychopathic offenders. Materials Offenders were told that they were in a study about their memory, and they were asked to recount a positive experience, a negative experience, and their violent offense—a homicide. The transcripts were cleaned, and the interviewer‘s questions were removed. The present analysis focuses only on their descriptions of positive and negative experiences, and not on their description of their murder. Positive experiences ranged from births, to marriages, to job tasks. Negative experiences were mostly non-homicidal crimes ranging from bank-holdups, kidnapping, and drug trafficking. There were 13 positive psychopathic transcripts, 11 negative psychopathic transcripts, 34 positive control transcripts, and 35 negative control transcripts. Transcripts varied in the amount of detail provided. For example, one offender described a positive life event, a mechanics course, as ―It was a lot of book study, a lot of on the job training,‖ and after probing by the interviewer to provide more detail, the offender told him ―That about covers it.‖ Other offenders provided a lot of detail, including specific days, descriptions, and prefacing information. For example, one offender describes a positive Psychopathic Storytelling 15 Results Narcissism and Pronoun Analysis First person singular analysis. Did the narcissistic nature of psychopaths lead them to use more language referencing themselves when re-telling their stories? As expected, psychopaths used more first person singular overall (freq = 1,391, relative freq = 7.00%) compared to controls (freq = 3,403, relative freq = 6.36%), LLR = 9.17 p < 0.01. A second question is whether the valence of the story affected the psychopaths‘ production of first person singular. Although offenders overall used more first person singular during negative events (freq = 2,775, relative frequency = 6.89%) than during positive events (freq = 2,019, relative freq = 6.09%), LLR=18.03, p < 0.001, as predicted psychopaths used more first person singular pronouns (freq = 603, relative freq = 6.77%) during positive stories than controls (freq = 1416, relative freq = 5.84%) LLR = 8.92, p < 0.01. In contrast, when describing negative events, psychopathic stories (freq = 788, relative freq = 7.20%) did not differ from control stories (freq = 1,987, relative freq = 6.78%), LLR=1.99, ns. This pattern of results suggest that psychopaths used more first person singular when describing events in their lives compared to controls, but that this effect is most salient when they are describing positive stories (See Figure 1). The results support H1, which predicted that psychopaths would use first person singular pronouns more frequently than controls given their narcissistic nature. First person plural analysis. Did psychopaths use less first person plural pronouns (i.e. ―we‖ and ―us) during their speech?? As predicted, psychopaths used less first person plural pronouns (freq = 162, relative freq = 0.82%) more than controls across positive and negative stories (freq = 785, relative freq =1.47%), LLR = 52.23, p < 0.0001. In addition, Psychopathic Storytelling 16 psychopaths used more first person plural when describing negative events (freq = 108, relative freq = 1.07%) compared to positive events (freq = 54, relative freq = 0.61%), LLR = 8.95, p < 0.01. These results suggest that psychopaths use less first person plural pronouns when describing events in their lives, but the effects are most salient when describing positive events (See Figure 2). The results supported H2, which predicted that psychopaths would use first person plural pronouns less frequently than controls. Third person analysis. Psychopaths used less third person language when speaking about negative events (freq = 368, relative freq = 3.36%) than controls (freq = 1,208, relative freq = 4.4%), LLR = 12.17, p < .001. There were no other significant effects (See Figure 3). The results partially supported H3, which predicted that psychopaths would use third person singular personal pronouns less frequently than controls. Taken together, these pronoun patterns suggest that the narcissistic nature of psychopaths is reflected in their pronoun use, and that their increased self-focus increases when discussing positive events. Psychological Distancing and Verb Tense Analysis Past tense analysis. Consistent with psychological distancing, offenders used more past tense during negative events (freq = 4,751, relative freq = 11.80%) than during positive events (freq = 3,303, relative freq = 9.96%), LLR = 56.36, p < 0.0001. The results support H4a, which predicted that during negative events, psychological distancing would be evidenced in a general increase in past tense verbs compared to positive events. Overall, psychopaths (freq = 2,114, relative freq = 10.64%) did not differ from controls (freq = 5,940, relative freq = 11.09%) in their use of past tense verbs LLR = 2.69, ns. The question of interest, however, was how the valence of the story affected past tense verb production for psychopaths compared to controls. H5a predicted that during negative events, psychopaths Psychopathic Storytelling 17 would use more past tense verbs than controls. This hypothesis was not supported. Psychopaths (freq = 1,301, relative freq = 12.88%) and controls (freq = 3,450, relative freq = 12.55%) produced the same rate of past tense verbs during their telling of the negative stories, LLR = 0.08, ns. A difference did emerge, however, during positive events. As predicted, psychopaths used less past tense (freq = 813, relative freq = 9.12%) than controls (freq = 2,490, relative freq = 11%) during positive events, LLR = 8.84, p < 0.01. The results supported H5b, which predicted that during positive events, psychopathic offenders would use less past tense verbs than controls. The results suggest that offenders use less past tense overall when telling positive stories, but the effect is more salient when psychopaths tell positive stories (See Figure 4). Present tense analysis. Consistent with psychological distancing, offenders used more present tense during positive events (freq = 1,930, relative freq = 5.82%) than during negative events (freq = 1,687, relative freq = 4.19%), LLR = 97.59, p < 0.0001. The results supported H4b, which predicted that during positive events, offenders in general would use more present tense verbs than during negative events. Overall, psychopaths (freq = 1,012, relative freq = 5.10%) and controls (freq = 2,605, relative freq = 4.87%) did not differ in their use of present tense verbs, LLR = 1.54, ns. The key question was whether the valence of the story affected present tense usage differently in psychopaths and controls. H6a predicted that during negative events, psychopaths would use less present tense verbs than controls. This hypothesis was not supported. During negative events, psychopaths (freq = 429, relative freq = 3.92%) and controls (freq = 1,258, relative freq = 4.58%) produced the same rate of present tense verb usage during the retelling of their negative stories, LLR = 2.7, ns. Similar to the pattern found during past tense verb usage, a difference emerged during positive Psychopathic Storytelling 20 experience, so the effects of narcissism are evident when the psychopathic offender fails to mention the two other important people involved in the experience. Also consistent with the predictions stemming from the narcissistic nature of psychopaths, psychopaths used significantly less first person plural pronouns than controls. Furthermore, psychopaths increased their use of first person plural pronouns during negative events, consistent with Porter and Porter‘s (2007) observation because the results suggest that psychopaths are more instrumental in their descriptions of the crime. They are less likely to blame themselves, so they speak about their accomplice in addition to themselves. For example, one psychopathic offender recalls an experience of a bank hold-up: Well, for the bank and that I was part of a few guys there, and uh, for us, it was, I wasn't ready and uh, I was really intoxicated, coke and everything now, and uh, and uh when we do bank it was like uh, to get some more money to spend and have fun and it was uh, like a challenge to do that because sometimes we do, three guys we go and uh, we do them all at the day, you know, sometimes we do three a day, we do bank, and we do them all bank, and on that time, that's year seventy, that was long time ago and uh, on this time uh, the bank was easy to do, you know, they give you the money and that was it, and you leave, and we never think about the consequences of that. Note that the psychopathic offender shifts blame away from himself and onto his friends by using the pronoun ―we.‖ Even more importantly, the psychopath mentions that he never thought about the consequences of his actions using ―we‖ as the sentence subject. The psychopathic lack of guilt and remorse is resilient in this subject‘s speech. When psychopaths Psychopathic Storytelling 21 increase their production of self plural pronouns, they shift blame away from themselves, psychologically distancing themselves from the experience. Contrary to predictions, psychopaths did not use less other-related pronouns overall or during positive events. However, in positive events, psychopaths use more first person singular pronouns and less first person plural pronouns compared to controls. These two types of pronouns may balance each other out and leave room for the same rate of third person pronouns. During negative events, however, psychopaths used less other-related pronouns compared to controls. This suggests that psychopaths fail to identify with their victims—consistent with Factor 1 on the PCL-R (Hare & Neumann, 2006). Psychological Distancing According to psychological distancing theory, the higher the degree of psychological distancing from an event, the further in time that event should be represented psychologically (Renninger & Cocking, 1993; Siegel & McGillicuddy-De Lisi, 2003) and linguistically (Cohn, Mehl, & Pennebaker, 2004; Woodworth, Hancock, & Porter, 2008). People should try to be more psychologically distant from negative events than from positive ones. This was the case in the present study. In general, when offenders spoke about their experiences, they used more past tense verbs when describing negative events than when describing positive events, consistent with the effects of psychological distancing. Psychopaths were expected to show this effect to an even greater degree than non- psychopaths. That is, psychopaths should be more distant from negative events but more ―in the moment‖ for positive events relative to controls. This prediction was partially supported. When psychopaths spoke about positive stories, they used less past tense verbs than controls. Psychopaths were less psychologically distant than controls during positive events. For Psychopathic Storytelling 22 example, one psychopathic offender described a positive experience, his time at an Olympic training camp: Basically I uh, get up in the morning . . .eat, get ready, go to the uh . . .to the jumping uh, area and be there at 8: 30, 9 in the morning, and you'd jump until about 11:00, 12, go for lunch, and you'd come back in the afternoon, and do the same thing. All's it is, is you have a pair of skis, ski boots, a wet suit, a life jacket and a helmet, that's it. You get on the water ramps and you go from there. The trampoline was - well for training with harnesses. Note that this experience happened in the past, but the offender describes it as if it is happening in the present. He is clearly not removed from his positive experience, which is consistent with lowered psychological distancing. Compare this line of description with a control talking about a positive experience, the birth of his daughter: Well, I was at a friend's house, and I got a call saying that, you, your girlfriends in labor, and I actually, not in labor, just had the baby. And, I went to the hospital, and I just, I seen my little girl and she looked, she was all me and it made me feel, now I finally had something to live for. It was, it was incredible… The control is moved by the birth of his child, but he speaks about it in the past tense. He does not live in the moment, and his use of the past tense suggests that it is merely a memory, not a time that he is stuck in and cannot leave. Consistent with the predictions, offenders in general used more present tense verbs during positive events, which suggests that they were less psychologically distant during positive events. During positive stories, psychopaths used more present tense verbs than Psychopathic Storytelling 25 that institutions could analyze samples of speech, categorizing people into personality groups (i.e., psychopath vs. non-psychopath), raising privacy concerns as well. Psychopathic Storytelling 26 Conclusion This study aimed to determine linguistic differences between psychopathic and non- psychopathic offenders during retelling of positively and negatively valenced stories. Linguistic differences were salient across narcissistic and psychological distancing dimensions. Psychopaths were found to use more first person singular pronouns, less first person plural pronouns, fewer past tense verbs and more present tense verbs when retelling positive events than controls. The results suggested that psychopaths display characteristics consistent with the narcissistic personality disorder and psychologically distance themselves in a different manner than controls. Studying offenders‘ storytelling opens doors into understanding the motivating psychology behind psychopathic offenders. Psychopathic Storytelling 27 References Blackburn, R. (2006). Other theoretical models of psychopathy. In C. J. Patrick (Ed.), Handbook of psychopathy (pp. 35-57). New York: The Guilford Press. Blair, J., Mitchell, D. R., & Blair, K. (2005). The psychopath. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Babiak, P. (2007). From darkness into the light: Psychopathy in industrial and organizational psychology. In H. Herve, & J.C. Yuille (Eds.), The Psychopath: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 411-428). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Cleckley, H. (1941). The mask of sanity. St. Louis: Mosby. Retrieved from books.google.com Cohn, M.A., Mehl, M.R., & Pennebaker, J.W. (2004). Linguistic markers of psychological change surrounding September 11, 2001. Psychological Science, 15(10), 687-693. Hare, R. D., & Neumann, C. S. (2006). The PCL-R Assessment of psychopathy. In C. J. Patrick (Ed.), Handbook of psychopathy (pp. 58-88). New York: The Guilford Press. Hare, R. D. (1998). Psychopaths and their nature: Implications for the mental health and criminal justice Systems. In T. Millon, E. Simonsen, M. Birket-Smith, & R. D. Davis (Eds.), Psychopathy: Antisocial, criminal, and violent behavior (pp. 188-214). New York: The Guilford Press. Retrieved from books.google.com. Kornet, R. M. (2008). Detecting emotion in psychopathic language: Emotional valence and locus in language produced by psychopathic offenders. eCommons@Cornell. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Retrieved October 15, 2008, from Psychopathic Storytelling 30 Figures Figure 1. First Person Singular Pronoun Usage 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 positive negative R e la ti v e F re q u e n c y First Person Singular Pronoun Usage psychopath control Note: Statistical differences across story valence and psychopath condition First Person Singular Interaction Effects Log Likelihood Ratio Psychopath Positive vs. Control Positive 8.92 Psychopath Negative vs. Control Negative 1.99 Psychopath Positive vs. Psychopath Negative 1.31 Control Positive vs. Control Negative 18.45 First Person Singular Main Effects Log Likelihood Ratio Positive vs. Negative 18.03 Psychopath vs. Control 9.17 Psychopathic Storytelling 31 Figure 2. First Person Plural Pronoun Usage 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 positive negative R e la ti v e F re q u e n c y First Person Plural Pronoun Usage psychopath control Note: Statistical differences across story valence and psychopath condition First Person Plural Interaction Effects Log Likelihood Ratio Psychopath Positive vs. Control Positive 53.08 Psychopath Negative vs. Control Negative 10.65 Psychopath Positive vs. Psychopath Negative 8.95 Control Positive vs. Control Negative 2.63 First Person Plural Main Effects Log Likelihood Ratio Positive vs. Negative 18.03 Psychopath vs. Control 9.17 Psychopathic Storytelling 32 Figure 3. Third Person Pronoun Usage 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 positive negative R e la ti v e F re q u e n c y Third Person Pronoun Usage psychopath control Note: Statistical differences across story valence and psychopath condition Third Person Interaction Effects Log Likelihood Ratio Psychopath Positive vs. Control Positive 0 Psychopath Negative vs. Control Negative 12.17 Psychopath Positive vs. Psychopath Negative 2.96 Control Positive vs. Control Negative 3.11 Third Person Main Effects Log Likelihood Ratio Positive vs. Negative 0.43 Psychopath vs. Control 6.52 Psychopathic Storytelling 35 Tables Table 1. Description of each linguistic category and frequency across positive and negative story categories by psychopath and control Code Definition Psychopath Stories Control Stories Positive Negative Positive Negative First person singular pronouns PPIO1 1st person sing. objective personal pronoun (me) 107 122 186 350 PPIS1 1st person sing. subjective personal pronoun (I) 496 666 1230 1637 Total first person singular 603 788 1416 1987 First person plural pronouns PPIO2 1st person plural objective personal pronoun (us) 5 20 51 58 PPIS2 1st person plural subjective personal pronoun (we) 49 88 327 349 Total First person plural 54 108 378 407 Third Person Pronouns PPHO1 3rd person sing. objective personal pronoun (him, her) 83 60 142 224 PPHO2 3rd person plural objective personal pronoun (them) 16 37 71 103 PPHS1 3rd person sing. subjective personal pronoun (he, she) 197 136 521 555 PPHS2 3rd person plural subjective personal pronoun (they) 45 135 191 326 Total third person pronouns 341 368 925 1208 Past tense verbs VBDR were 18 49 149 160 VBDZ was 197 310 695 858 VBN been 11 13 31 32 VDD did 64 58 96 178 VDN done 8 6 16 20 VHD had (past tense) 54 86 228 251 VVD past tense of lexical verb (e.g. gave, worked) 375 650 1039 1601 VVN past participle of lexical verb (e.g. given, worked) 86 129 236 350 Total Past tense verbs 813 1301 2490 3450 Present tense verbs VBG being 6 3 24 16 Psychopathic Storytelling 36 Table 2. Contingency table of frequencies and (relative frequencies) across positive and negative story categories by psychopath and control First person singular pronouns Positive Negative Total Psychopath 603 (6.77) 788 (7.2) 1391 (7.00) Control 1416 (5.84) 1987 (6.78) 3403 (6.36) Total 2019 (6.09) 2775 (6.89) 4794.00 First person plural pronouns Positive Negative Total Psychopath 54 (.61) 108 (0.99) 162 (0.82) Control 378 (1.56) 407 (1.39) 785 (1.47) Total 432 (1.30) 515 (1.28) 947.00 Third person pronouns Positive Negative Total Psychopath 341 (3.83) 368 (3.36) 709 (3.57) Control 925 (3.82) 1208 (4.12) 2133 (3.98) Total 1266 (3.82) 1576 (3.91) 2842.00 Past tense verbs Positive Negative Total Psychopath 813 (9.12) 1301(11.88) 2114 (10.64) Control 2490 (10.27) 3450 (11.77) 5940 (11.09) Total 3303 (9.96) 4751 (11.80) 8054.00 VBM am 31 17 80 65 VBR are 29 11 64 42 VBZ is 134 80 180 210 VD0 do, base form (finite) 35 44 117 113 VDG doing 3 19 20 33 VDI do, infinitive (I may do... To do...) 13 11 29 53 VDZ does 3 3 2 10 VHG having 8 2 12 9 VHZ has 6 5 17 8 VV0 base form of lexical verb (e.g. give, work) 217 213 711 626 VVZ -s form of lexical verb (e.g. gives, works) 98 21 91 73 Total present tense verbs 583 429 1347 1258 Psychopathic Storytelling 37 Present tense verbs Positive Negative Total Psychopath 583 (6.54) 429 (3.92) 1012 (5.10) Control 1347 (5.52) 1258 (4.29) 2605 (4.87) Total 1930 (5.82) 1687 (4.19) 3617.00 Table 3. Total Word Count Type Word Count Psychopath Positive 8913.00 Psychopath negative 10949.00 Control positive 24237.00 Control Negative 29307.00 Psychopath total 19862.00 Control total 53544.00 Positive total 33150.00 Negative total 40256.00