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Why did I choose this book?
I chose The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson because it covers the topic of psychology, which is something I have always been interested in and would love to study in college. Jon Ronson is a journalist and the format of this good is one that I enjoy to read and follow. I feel like I can definitely engage in this book.

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week 1: read through page 138 by 11/20
week 2: read through page 206 by 12/7
week 3: read through page 275 by 12/14

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"I decided, no, it would be a mistake to start meddling in the world of psychopaths, an especially big mistake for someone like me, who suffers from a massive surfeit of anxiety"(Ronson 11).

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"I decided, no, it would be a mistake to start meddling in the world of psychopaths, an especially big mistake for someone like me, who suffers from a massive surfeit of anxiety"(Ronson 11).

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I find this quote to be super interesting because it perfectly displays the author's writing style and his personality. In the first few pages of the book it is easy to tell that Ronson is indecisive, anxious and a careful man. He flat out says the world anxiety, which comes up often in any situation in which he is describing himself or his mood. And in this quote Ronson is turning down the idea of digging into the world of psychopaths, but he clearly chose to take risk since he did write a whole book about his experience - which brings irony in. I think the irony of the sentence and his word choice brings his personality into his writing.

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"On page 13 of every copy a hole had been assiduously cut out"(Ronson 14).

adverb.
with great care and perseverance.

The engineers worked assiduously to find a way to fix the robot before the competition was to take place the following day.

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"In fact the only time the price wavered during those heady months was on December 2, 1996, when BusinessWeek revealed that Dunlap had failed to show up at his parents' funerals and had threatened his first wife with a knife. On that day, the share price went down 1.5 percent"(Ronson 146).

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"In fact the only time the price wavered during those heady months was on December 2, 1996, when BusinessWeek revealed that Dunlap had failed to show up at his parents' funerals and had threatened his first wife with a knife. On that day, the share price went down 1.5 percent"(Ronson 146).

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This quote is pulled from the section in which Ronson is looking into the number of psychopaths whom run big corporations, and their effects on the company. Ronson specifically digs deep into one CEO of a large toaster company, Al Dunlap, who Ronson and many others believe is psychopathic. To Ronson's surprise the company's statistics were actually thriving under control of Dunlap. Share prices were for the most part higher than ever. As psychopaths often come off as the most charming of people, not many employees or customers knew what kind of a person they were getting involved with. Ronson uses statistics though to show that once Dunlap's psychopathic traits were exposed to the public, the company hit a bump in the road. Ronsosn is accomplishing several things with this selection, showing readers that psychopaths are the least expected, and that their personality traits can actually have an effect on even the largest corporations

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"He shot me a steely, blue eyed stare, which I found quite debilitating"(Ronson 149).

adjective.
making someone very weak and infirm, tending to weaken something.
The decrease in sales seemed to have a rather debilitating effect on the company as a whole.

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"I think he saw his checklist as something pure - innocent as only science can be - but the humans who administered it as masses of weird prejudices and crazy predispositions"(Ronson 216)

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"I think he saw his checklist as something pure - innocent as only science can be - but the humans who administered it as masses of weird prejudices and crazy predispositions"(Ronson 216)

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Ronson writes this when he is discussing his meeting with Bob Hare in the executive bar of a hotel. At this time, Bob Hare and Ronson discussed how people around the world went about assuming diagnostics of people being psychopaths just because they had access to and had learned a lot about Hare's checklist. Hare's checklist was accurate and an important part of psychology but the more hands the checklist landed in, the less effective it was. Once one has the checklist, the tend to go power-mad and scope out any traits that apply to the list when they meet new people, or with people they have already known. This quote is emphasizing that the itself is a pure and innocent item but the people who use the checklist are not pure and can alter the effectiveness of the checklist. Ronson and Hare are trying to show the strength and power the checklist has and the importance of keeping it out of the hands of too many unprofessional people.

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"At what point does querying diagnostic criteria tip over into mocking the unusual symptoms of people in very real distress?"(Ronson 232).

verb.
ask a question about something, especially in order to express ones doubts about it or to check its validity of accuracy.

Once the trial concluded, many people queried whether or not the right decision was made.

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"It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy"(Ronson 43).

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"It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy"(Ronson 43).

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In this section of the book Ronson is meeting with a man, Tony, in a mental institution. Tony claims that he faked madness so that he would be placed in a mental hospital rather than actual jail, for he figured it would be a less brutal experience. Though once he convinced people he was crazy, there was practically no way for him to convince them that he is mentally stable, because just trying to do so makes him seem more insane. I really like this section because this is one of Ronson's first experience exploring the minds of psychopaths, and he is working with someone who could truly be either or: a psychopath, or someone who truly has mental stability. This quote really pulls the general situation together in a blunt but intriguing way.

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"...and 'was removed from the church for ecclesiastical crimes'"(Ronson 49).

adjective.
relating to the Christian Church or its clergy.

The entirety of the small village attending the same church, leading everyday life to revolve around ecclesiastical hierarchy.

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"The psychopaths he met during his first days at Oak Ridge were nothing like R.D. Laing's schizophrenics. Although they were undoubtedly insane, you would never realize it. They seemed perfectly ordinary"(Ronson 73).

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"The psychopaths he met during his first days at Oak Ridge were nothing like R.D. Laing's schizophrenics. Although they were undoubtedly insane, you would never realize it. They seemed perfectly ordinary"(Ronson 73).

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I pulled this quote from the book because it includes an idea that is constantly popping up throughout the book. The idea that you never really know that someone is a psychopath when you first meet them because of how charming and ordinary and similar to you they seem. Ronson learns in this section that although psychopaths barely feel emotion, they know how to make it seem as if they are emotional and ordinary people by imitating others expressions. The idea that psychopathy differentiates from other mental disorders in this way is often brought up in the book. Other disorders, such as schizophrenia as stated in this quote, are easy to spot because the person suffering has clear characteristics that set them aside from the rest of population. Normally you would not be able to pick out a psychopath from a crowd. This quote really pulls the thought of psychopaths seeming completely normal together, because it mentions how even a trained profession can struggle to spot out a psychopath at first.

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"Her paintings were greatly admired in the 1960s and 1970s for illustrating the mad, colorful, painful, exuberant, complicated inner life of a schizophrenic"(Ronson 72).

adjective.
filed with or characterized by a lively energy and excitement.

Although she has never even left her home state, her dreams are filled with exuberant adventures of her exploring foreign ans far-away nations.

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"At the end of our conversation she turned to address you, the reader. She said if you are beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some if these traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one"(Ronson 114).

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"At the end of our conversation she turned to address you, the reader. She said if you are beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some if these traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one"(Ronson 114).

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The main characteristic of psychopath that Ronson brings up consistently in the book is that psychopaths do not have feeling. In the section where this quote is pulled from Ronson was having a conversation with Martha Stout, a psychologist and author. She clarified the ways of a psychopath's mind for Ronson. He quoted their conversation into his writing and much of it was about the psychopaths inability to feel emotion. Martha Stout knew that some readers would read too far into this part and self diagnose themselves as psychopaths. This quote clarified for readers, and really emphasized the lack of feeling a psychopath experiences, because if a reader were experiencing feelings of anxiety or stress about the situation, just because they felt that way would indicate that they are not a psychopath.

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"'Which means you'll find a preponderance of them at the top of the tree?'"(Ronson 113)"

noun.
the quality or fact of being greater in number, quantity, or importance.

The preponderance of the evidence proving he was guilty helped the jury come to a quick decision.

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"That's the psychopath: someone who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened"(Ronson 136)

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"That's the psychopath: someone who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened"(Ronson 136)

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Jon Ronson met with skillful psychologist and creator of the Hare HCL-R Checklist used by psychologist to diagnosed people as psychopaths. In one of Ronsons conversations with Hare, Hare tells him of a time when he had to help an actress prepare to play the role of a psychopath in a movie. Hare told the actress to imagine she had seen a bunch of people surrounding the scene of a deadly car accident that killed a child. He told her to imagine herself walking over to the crowd because she sees that something important happened, view the bloody scene, study the crying mother, and then turn around in leave. He wanted the actress to imagine that she was not disgusted or upset by the view of the dead child, and could not empathize for the crying mother, but was able to take the situation as a chance to mimic the mothers expressions. This is when Hare said the quote shown above. It really emphasizes the idea that although psychopaths may not have the ability to feel emotion or understand what others are feeling, they can recognize that emotions and feelings are something important to people and something they show when something important happens.

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"He implied that should the extradition go ahead, he's reveal devastating secrets about American foreign policy in Haiti"(Ronson 123).

noun.
the action of extraditing (handing over the criminal to the jurisdiction of the foreign state in which the crime was committed) a person accused or convicted of a crime.

The family fought against the government in hopes to prevent the extradition of their son to Italy.

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"'Manipulative?' I said. 'I think you could describe it as leadership,' he said. 'Inspire! I think it's called leadership'"(Ronson 157)

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"'Manipulative?' I said. 'I think you could describe it as leadership,' he said. 'Inspire! I think it's called leadership'"(Ronson 157)

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This is a small piece of the conversation that Ronson had with Al Dunlap, now former CEO of the toaster company, which shut down after he abandoned it. Ronson was listing off some of the items from the Bob Hare list, which determines whether or not one is a psychopath, and asking Dunlap if he help the item applied to him. Dunlap would take the items from the list and turn them into business positives, things that would make him seem better than the list was technically implying. By twisting the items into positives Dunlap was reassuring himself that he did not follow under the umbrella of psychopathy. However, Dunlap was practically agreeing to everything on the list, therefor showing Ronson his psychopathic traits. Ronson includes this conversation in his book because it can really bring an improved understanding to the reader as it is a quoted example of how psychopaths act.

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"I thought if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable"(Ronson 168).

adjective.
impossible to understand.

The admissions test was impenetrable to even the most educated.

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"I now felt the checklist was a powerful and intoxicating weapon that was capable of inflicting terrible damage if placed in the wrong hands. I was beginning to suspect that my hands might be the wrong hands"(Ronson 185).

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"I now felt the checklist was a powerful and intoxicating weapon that was capable of inflicting terrible damage if placed in the wrong hands. I was beginning to suspect that my hands might be the wrong hands"(Ronson 185).

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The more Ronson used Bob Hare's checklist, the more he found himself automatically diagnosing people, even ones he had never met. He began to feel differently about the list and began to question its power. Ronson knows he is not a qualified psychologist, that he is only a journalist gaining as much information on psychopathy as he can. So as he gets deeper into this unfamiliar world, he finds himself basing all of his thoughts and impressions of people off of the list, immediately looking for traits that fall under the items on the list. He questions his authority to be doing such a thing, and questions the effects that having the list is having on his views of the world. He includes this statment of his fear that the list being in his hands means that the list is in the wrong hands to clarify to his readers that he does not think that since he's met a few psychopaths and a few psychologists that he is a professional in the psychopath spotting field. It is a reassurance to readers that Ronson is aware that he may be getting carried away in his work, and that his intentions aren't to diagnose everyone he meets or hears about as a psychopath.

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"He was, he discovered on his first day, to be an office based spy, in a quite mundane room, nowhere near as entrancing as his conspiracy-minded friends imagined life inside a shadowy organization like M15 would be"(Ronson 192).

adjective.
lacing interest or excitement; dull.

The singer walked out onto the stage expecting to feel the excitement in the air, but to her surprise the arena was quite mundane.

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"Some parents came to wrongly believe that this sudden, startling outbreak was linked to the MMR vaccine. Doctors like Andrew Wakefield and celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey promoted the view. Parents stopped giving the vaccine to their children. Some caught measles and died"(Ronson 244).

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"Some parents came to wrongly believe that this sudden, startling outbreak was linked to the MMR vaccine. Doctors like Andrew Wakefield and celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey promoted the view. Parents stopped giving the vaccine to their children. Some caught measles and died"(Ronson 244).

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In this particular section of the book Ronson was discussing the increase in childhood psychiatric disorder diagnoses. Some people thought that the increase in children with Autism had to do with the increasingly more common MMR vaccine. When parents wrongly assumed this though and stopping giving the vaccine to their children, kids were at great risk of illness and even death. Ronson includes this quote in his writing to emphasize the importance of ensuring information is truthful before spreading it in the medical and psychiatric world. Ronson is trying to show his readers that the spread of wrong information can have a huge impact on peoples lives, and even leave people in danger that could have been avoided.

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"The nurse who earlier had cryptically told me of his strong opinions about Tony came over"(Ronson 264).

adverb.
mysteriously, abruptly, puzzling.

The man cryptically read though the news paper as the description of the suspect in the article perfectly match his wife, who was sitting across from him.