Chapter four of Ronson’s book opens the door for his desire to diagnose psychopaths. By attending a three day session aimed towards how to detect psychopaths, Ronson begins to clear up his mind about the possibility of psychopaths truly being manipulative, witty, and heartless. The conference, held by Bob Hare who came up with the twenty point PCL-R Checklist and a well-known name in psychology, gave Ronson an insight into how psychopaths differ from normal humans through experiments involving short term memory and fear in relation to their amygdala. The study of this relation set off a spark in Ronson, who immediately took to it with multiple theories about its correlation to psychopaths. Hare provided enough evidence to gain Ronson’s trust and persuaded him to believe in the checklist and the twenty factors that psychopaths play into. This conference had a major effect on Ronson’s view of psychopaths and how they functioned, as now he believed they are everywhere and could easily be detected by him.
Chapter four of The Psychopath Test did a very nice job of providing information on Bob Hare’s perspective of psychopaths. It not only informed the reader of his opinions, it opened up the idea of varying theories behind the reasoning of psychopaths. Chapter five made me believe that Ronson perhaps thought too highly of the checklist and worked too hard to correlate what was being said or thought to the checklist. If you try hard enough, I’m sure one could relate anything someone says to one of the twenty points on the checklist. His overexcitement in the checklist may be a cause for concern. Being too invested could alter the way in which he perceives an individual and adjust the results of his diagnosis.
