Psychopaths are generally difficult to identify because they are skilled at masking their traits, but a new study has uncovered surprising clues that give them away. 

Researchers analyzed more than 1,200 autobiographical accounts and found patterns ranging from fewer mentions of fear to negative descriptions of happy memories.

People higher in boldness, which involves fearlessness and confidence, used fewer anxiety-related words such as 'fear', 'afraid' and 'worry', and made fewer references to mental illness.

Those higher in disinhibition, or difficulty controlling impulses, used more negative language when describing high points and turning points in their lives.

They also used less positive language overall and made fewer references to friends and achievement.

People higher in meanness, which includes a lack of empathy, used more positive language and more words linked to achievement and rewards.

But when describing major turning points, they used fewer words associated with negative emotions.

University of Mississippi researcher Laura Drislane said: 'What we're starting to see is that in psychopathy, there are traits that relate to differences in meaning-making and the ways people think about their life.'

The three traits form the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy, which examines psychopathy as a combination of personality dimensions rather than a single category.

University of Mississippi researchers Ky Bray and Drislane, an assistant professor of psychology, examined accounts from a sample of 451 people, including 307 college students and 144 adults who reported having previously been incarcerated.

Participants were asked to describe a high point, a low point and a turning point in their lives, and completed a questionnaire assessing their psychopathic traits.

Text-analysis software then counted words associated with categories such as positive and negative emotions, achievement, social confidence and risk.

The findings challenge the stereotype that people with psychopathic traits always use cold, emotionless language. Instead, their word choices varied depending on the trait and the experience they were describing.

'People tend to think of psychopathy as one thing, but it's actually multidimensional,' Bray said. 

'What we mean when we say that is everyone exists on this spectrum. Everyone has some degree of meanness, boldness and disinhibition.

'Viewing it from a multidimensional perspective allows us to observe how those traits might manifest in nonforensic populations, in people who have not committed a crime. 

'That allows us to see how these traits affect college students, business professionals or interpersonal relationships.'

Studying those individual traits could help explain differences in people's behavior and relationships that a single label might obscure.

'That's in part why there's a movement away from calling people "psychopaths," because we don't view psychopathy as a category,' Drislane said. 

'But psychopathic dimensions can predict important outcomes, things like crime, recidivism or intimate partner violence.

'What our research, including this paper, suggests is that it's important to look beyond that label and into the different components or dimensions of psychopathy, because each of those dimensions actually has a unique set of outcomes or things that it can predict.'

The researchers hope that a clearer understanding of these traits could eventually inform efforts to address them and understand how they develop.

'If we want to be able to treat or ideally even prevent psychopathy from developing, we need to understand the mechanisms at play,' she said. 

'That comes down to understanding the unique contributors for all three of these dimensions.'