Psychopaths can be spotted on Twitter, study says

Psychopathic Killers: Computerized Text Analysis Uncovers the Word Patterns of a Predator: As words can be the soul's window, scientists are learning to peer through it: Computerized text analysis shows that psychopathic killers make identifiable word choices -- beyond conscious control -- when talking about their crimes. This research could lead to new tools for diagnosis and treatment, and have implications law enforcement and social media.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111014145114.htm

Study: Twitter analysis can be used to detect psychopathy: A multi-disciplinary team of researchers has been studying whether it's possible to detect psychopathy in people's tweets. Results suggest that in certain contexts, personality prediction through social media can perform with a "reasonably high degree of accuracy". Computer scientists at Florida Atlantic University, the Online Privacy Foundation and Kaggle teamed up to see whether it was possible to identify the "Dark Triad" of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism through people's Twitter usage. The team will be presenting the research on 29 July at Defcon in Las Vegas.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/23/twitter-psychopaths

Using Twitter To Identify Psychopaths: People’s nasty traits have a way of revealing themselves on social networks: in writing. Or rather in how they write. That means an analysis of how someone tweets could reveal whether he or she is narcissistic, Machiavellian, or psychopathic, according to researchers who plan to present their findings at DefCon next week. What are some of the Twitter stylings of these undesirables? Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word “hate.” Using the word “we.” Using periods. Using filler words such as “blah” and “I mean” and “um.” Author's side note: (I suspect that an analysis of the Twitter streams of many a blogger would suggest they are potentially a narcissist, a psychopath or an avid reader of “The Prince.” Which may well be an accurate assessment.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/07/20/using-twitter-to-help...