Jon Ronson Chapter 4 Summary

In Chapter 4 of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test, his main idea is that psychopaths try to act normal to fit in with society, but there were ways to identify them. Ronson started out by talking to a man named Bob Hare, who formed a checklist of twenty items to identify psychopaths. Ronson was invited to a conference held by Bob Hare to teach people how to identify psychopaths using his checklist. Hare showed a video of a man that an assistant of Hare's interviewed, and by answering questions and telling stories from is lifetime, the man fit into every item on the checklist. After the conference, Ronson was trained to identify psychopaths. Because Ronson knew the items on the checklist, he did what he always does and tries to identify himself. He found that he fell under a few of the items and thought that he couldn't possibly be a psychopath. Ronson knew that psychopaths do not have a conscience. Ronson recognized he had some of the traits, but after talking with Martha Stout he knew there was no way he could be a psychopath because psychopaths would never identify themselves with any of the items on the list.
I found chapter 4 to be very interesting. It seems weird that someone could use the list made by Hare to identify psychopaths. Obviously the book is non-fiction, so the list has been used. It would be cool to use the list and ask someone I know questions and see if they identify. I also liked chapter 5 and how Ronson used weakness as a term that made Toto show who he truly was. I wasn't really confused about anything in these chapters; I just found them very fun to read.