What You'll Learn:
Galvanized into investigating the nature of psychopathy after a few strange encounters, Ronson interviews psychologists and psychopaths from all over the world to understand better what psychopathy is and isn’t. Psychopaths constitute just one percent of society, but the ways they impact our daily lives are myriad.
Key Insights:
- Insanity has the potential to disrupt our world more than we might suspect.
- Scientologists have a branch of their organization devoted to delegitimizing psychology.
- Psychopaths don’t change, but that hasn’t stopped some psychologists from challenging that consensus.
- Psychologists evaluate levels of psychopathy in a person using a 20-item checklist.
- We sometimes judge people by their roughest edges, but this approach has its shortcomings.