TEDxMarrakesh - Jon Ronson - How to Spot a Psychopath

It's harder than you might think. About 1 in 100 people test out as psychopaths, and the best place to find them is in prisons and corporate boardrooms. The creator of the psychopath test (PCL-R Test, a 20-step Psychopath Checklist), Dr. Robert Hare, is a central figure in the book. Here is a brief definition:

'People who are psychopathic prey ruthlessly on others using charm, deceit, violence or other methods that allow them to get what they want. The symptoms of psychopathy include: lack of a conscience or sense of guilt, lack of empathy, egocentricity, pathological lying, repeated violations of social norms, disregard for the law, shallow emotions, and a history of victimizing others.' - Robert Hare, Ph.D 

A key issue is that many psychopaths are smart enough to know that violence will get them locked up, so they resort to other means of control and manipulation, some of which are social acceptable, especially in men.




TEDxMarrakesh - Jon Ronson - How to Spot a Psychopath

Jon Ronson is an award-winning writer and documentary maker. He is the author of two previous bestsellers, Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats, and two collections, Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness and What I Do: More True Tales of Everyday Craziness and his latest book -- also a Sunday Times top ten bestseller -- is The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. Jon Ronson lives with his family in London.

Psychologist (and author) Paul Bloom reviewed Ronson's books for the New York Times.

Do psychopaths enjoy reading books about psychopaths? In his engagingly irreverent new best seller, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (Riverhead, $25.95), the journalist Jon Ronson notes that only about one in 100 people are psychopaths (there is a higher proportion in prisons and corporate boardrooms), but he wonders if this population will be overrepresented among readers of his book. After all, people do enjoy learning about themselves, and psychopaths in particular have an enhanced sense of their own importance. And they might like what Ronson has to say. He approvingly quotes experts who argue that psychopaths make “the world go around.” Despite their small numbers, they cause such chaos that they remold society — though not necessarily for the better.

The whole review also looks at The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen.