Mastodawn

I was informally (mis)diagnosed as "probably psychopathic" by my supervisor when I did my Social Psychology postgraduate at the University of Leicester psychiatric teaching hospital back in 1989. Now I realise that I was really diagnosed with adult autism by a psychologist who didn't have the tools to differentiate.

It's interesting because it started me on my path to computerising the psychiatric investigation part of the DSM (well, initially Hare PCL) evaluation for my Master's degree. The psychometric question-and-answer model and demo I came up with had me firmly psychopathic in PCL's diagnostic terms, whereas these days it would be easily diagnosed as autism.

I went on to expand the idea from psychometrics, to behaviour analysis in virtual worlds, which I figured would be a better capture than psychometric questions - Would the person co-operate to attain a goal, would they show altruism, would they be quick to anger - There's a lot you can measure in the virtual world as we know very well now, but didn't in 1991. Sadly, the lack of modern technology and the need to feed myself brought this PhD to an end without a write-up - But it's no wonder I ended up working for OkCupid, I guess :D

The sad thing about that is that although it didn't impact my life at all, other than having an interesting topic to discuss at parties, the PCL is used as a tool by US prisons in their parole calculations. A PCL diagnosis is a heavy weighting against parole, even though Hare himself has said that isn't the way this should be used. I dread to think how many autistic people are stuck in prisons for evermore because of misdiagnosed psychopathy.

The psychopathy test puts a lot more emphasis on masking and social interactions than on kidnapping people and putting them in wells to skin them later, I feel.

I can't be bothered to write a blog post about this, so I will scream into the #Mastodon #Void instead - Except now I have to think of some other #Hashtags which is always the hard part, I get carried away, autism you see!

#Medicine #Psychology #Psychiatry #MentalHealth #Education #Diagnosis #Psychopathy #HarePCL #DSM #Psychometrics #Statistics #Autism #ADHD #RetroComputing #Gaming #Online #Worlds #MUD #Leicester #UniversityofLeicester #Prison #Parole #HannibalLecter #SilenceoftheLambs #OkCupid #Tinder #Hinge #MatchGroup #Algorithms #BigData

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diana 🏳️‍⚧️🦋🌱Jun 13

@lorry

I quickly learned how to answer behavioral diagnostic tests as my mom displayed hardcore covert narcissist traits. I knew if I ever came out to my family when under their control, they definitely would have me taken for conversion therapy, electroshock, lobotomy (this happened to my grandmother) etc, like other family members were subjected to when they weren't straight enough.

Every time I took the MMPI since 40 years ago, I wanted to come out, but I knew I was not safe, so I knew how to answer every question as a strong leader, but I knew I was dying inside.

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Lorry

@dianea The irony is that a lot of what I would describe as very poorly designed psychometric tests, especially the ones used for employment and screening, are quite the opposite. I really expected to see more adaptive testing these days, where the test is fluid and digs into ambiguous response data. I guess if you asked an LLM to test somebody, that's exactly what it would do.

But most of these screening tests are just on a different level. They measure compliance, and the candidate's ability to predict the role and the required mindset, mould themselves to it, and importantly, make a mental call to commit to putting it down on paper. In cynical pop-psychology sales terms, it's their first "yes" on the ongoing yes-ladder.

To me, it's a depressing insult to science. To a recruiter and an HR department, it's a great addition to their toolbox.