Jon Ronson Blog Assignment 2

In chapter four of The Psychopath Test, Jon Ronson discusses the possibility of psychopaths being the reason for all of the bad in the world. In 1975, he attended a conference to learn abut Bob Hare's psychopath checklist. Bob showed examples of videos of psychopaths explaining having no feeling of remorse and many of the other items on the checklist. He was able to come to the conclusion that psychopaths are likely to re-offend and don't have the same connects between the amygdalae and the central nervous system. Ronson quickly learned that psychopaths are often the people he'd least expect, because they put on acts based on their studying of peoples emotions; they are often very manipulative and charming. Psychopaths are often found in high places with lots of power. They also Ronson learned a lot about studies that have been done on psychopaths, and now has a feeling that he can assess whether a person is a psychopath or not.

I found Ronson's fourth chapter to be very interesting. I think that there are probably a lot more psychopaths in the world than we realize or know of, but I don't think they are the sole cause for all evil things. I don't think it's fair to place people into only two categories, psychopaths and non-hpsychopaths. I believe there are many other types of people and other reasons for bad things that happen. I found Ronson's fifth chapter also to be very interesting. Toto Constant is a good example of how psychopaths can be very manipulative. Originally, Ronson was fooled by Toto, but later, talked to him again and asked questions in a specific way to see if he was a psychopath. I think this chapter shows how difficult it can be to prove someone a psychopath when they are very good at imitation and imitate non-psychopaths. They are so manipulative, it is often hard to tell what is real and what it isn't. Both of these chapters make me wonder how many psychopaths there really are and if Hare's checklist really works. Can we really define people in just these two categories?