The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson

The Psychopath Test

By Jon Ronson

  • Release Date: 2011-05-12
  • Genre: Social Science
Score: 4
4
From 1,285 Ratings

Description

In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

Reviews

  • Super interesting!

    4
    By Dawson327
    The beginning is a tad dry, roughly the first chapter. After that I couldn’t put it down, it covers conspiracy theorists, narcissists, global power psychology, etc. The part about the guy Tony who faked insanity to escape a death sentence was wild!
  • Completely misses the meaning of the word nuance

    3
    By Pdnrjdododndnd
    The Psychopath Test was written like it was meant to be a forewarning on the dangers of labeling and putting people in boxes - however, it follows the dangerous trend of valuing your own opinion over actual facts and scientific studies. The lesson to be learned is that yes, not every unpleasant person you meet will be a psychopath. That much is true and obvious. The good about this book is that it teaches you to take a middle ground and to not reduce people’s personalities into a checklist. However, with this in mind, the author ignores the presence of actual scientific studies of human behavior and personality disorders. Ironically, even though this book preaches the virtue of nuance and critical thinking, the presence of any “personality disorders” tended to be talked through the lens of the few people who were misidentified, versus the statistical majority of people who were mostly correctly identified. If you read any book on personality disorders, you would understand how actually rare most of them are because any book based on science is comfortable explaining how reliable the numbers are. The author chooses nothing rigorous to back his themes other than literal anecdotes. I cannot repeat enough that there is solid scientific, repeatable studies out there that the author simply failed to mention because this book was meant to be taken as a treatise of his own observations. It is disingenuous that way, in that the absence of any conclusion is meant to be in itself a conclusion. The human nature is currently full of mysteries and the physical mechanics of it are something we don’t know much about yet, but there are people out there who are making concerted efforts into shedding light into the subject. To ignore the scientific basis of what is essentially a scientific problem is like writing a recipe book without recipes, and simply telling the person to follow your heart on what to cook, ignoring any repeatable or measurable element. Yes, we are all reluctant to reduce our behaviors into neat little boxes. But it is dangerous to ignore actual elements of mental instability, especially from the angle of personality disorders. It might encourage people who are in abusive relationships to constantly second think their own decisions because in their own mind, there is no way another human being might be so poisonous that they don’t understand empathy. In reality, people without the cogent understanding of it exist, and that is why domestic violence is prevalent. It is not wrong to want to see the good in people. It is however, entirely inadvisable to ignore that there are studies out there that prove deep depravities that a fraction of the population is capable of. Entertaining read though, I’ll give it that.
  • A fantastic exploration of psych society

    5
    By Cookie_Austin
    Ronson's ability to remain unbiased throughout this book is uncanny. His mission to lay the facts bare, whether citing sources for the overprescription of psych drugs to children. Or exploring the selection of guests for a reality tv show. He remains true, never taking a side. I cannot wait to see what he does next.
  • Fascinating read!

    5
    By Loripalooza
    Enlightening, entertaining, educational and thought provoking.
  • The psychopath test

    5
    By Gigi Vaz
    Easy read and interesting.... Love the fact that is a true story
  • Fun and playful book on an extreme topic

    5
    By Mr Machdes
    A clever and ironic journey into the world of psychopathy and the doctors who treat them. Like his other books, this one is a wonderful and mysterious story, all based on interviews and research with interesting people. I find his style of writing even more enjoyable than his Canadian alter ego, Malcolm Gladwell. If you like clever stories, about eccentric people you will love this book.
  • Fun read

    4
    By ineedareed
    I really enjoyed the twists and turns this book presented. I am left with some questions to ponder about sanity. This is an excellent read.
  • Could not put down!

    5
    By Keeping it real 10000
    Absolutely fascinating read...
  • Hilarious anecdotes

    4
    By G@mt
    I honestly did not know that this literary work is supposed to be non-fiction until a book club member said she was googling some of the characters and mentioned it as such. I laughed all of the way through it. If you are looking for an objective scientific research study in examination of Bob Hare's Psychopath Test Checklist as a tool for criminal profiling, you won't find that here. You will find a good read that will make you question your neighbors and your spouse, even yourself! It was vague in that it has no plot and there were a few places of redundant paragraphs. Sometimes it lacked cohesiveness. I would still recommend it for the laughs and the bright read.
  • Not his best book?!

    5
    By SweetNessy
    It is my understanding in reading previous reviews of his work, that this is not the author's best work. Now I am compelled to begin reading his other works to find out which is better than this one. This is an excellent book. It is a lively road-trip type yarn that will have you reading in open mouthed disbelief that such people exist outside of a Jerry Springer studio. That is the point of the book, that there is a way to identify those that are the right kind of crazy. I want to read his six-star book immediately.