The findings of the present study thus diverge from previous findings in some aspects (e.g., the use of first-person pronouns), while they provide support for others (e.g., the incoherence of thoughts and changes in topics). Previous research in the field of psychology has largely examined “psychopathic” and “narcissistic” language in spoken conversations rather than written ones, or in texts produced for the respective study rather than in naturally occurring texts. This will be achieved through the investigation of linguistic features reflective of the conditions of psychopathy and malignant narcissism in 14 personal letters of the killer Jack Unterweger. The present study intends to provide a starting point for research into this area. One aspect of such a profile that is not usually considered is an analysis of the author’s personality traits. Forensic authorship profiling aims to extract socio-demographic information about the authors of anonymous texts based on linguistic features found in their written texts.
