The Psychopath Test- Chapters 4 and 5

In chapter 5, Ronson attempts to put his psychopath detecting skills to the test and visits a mass murderer, Toto, that had been locked up for mortgage fraud for 37 years in a high security prison. After learning about Bob Hare's psychopath test, Ronson started to wonder if Tony is a psychopath and wanted to test out the list of characteristics to see if he would be able to pick one out. He had encountered the mass murderer Toto years before, when he interviewed him in Queens after he was let off the hook for being the leader of a death squad in Haiti because he blamed it on other people. When he went to visit him at prison, Toto convinced him that he was not a psychopath off the bat because he talked about having so many emotions. Ronson almost fell for his ploy. He learned that if he addressed questions by framing them to imply that Toto was showing signs of weakness, Toto would start to exhibit very clear characteristics that matched those on Bob Hare's list, such as showing no remorse. Ronson left the prison after his conversation with Toto very confident that he was able to identify a psychopath.

One of the main things I keep wondering while reading this text has been, that if psychopaths are so good at imitating people's emotions and being manipulative and deceiving, and making people believe they are someone other than who they truly are, are they aware of the psychopath test and how to avoid sounding like one? Is it because they refuse to believe that anything is wrong with them or do they actually have no idea that they are one, or that people might perceive them to be one? For example if they were to read off of Bob Hare's list "lack of remorse", would they be able to identify with any situation where they felt a lack of remorse and wonder if they are exhibiting signs of a psychopath? Or for pathological lying, would they be aware of how much they lie to get out of situations?  At any rate I love reading this book because it is full of concepts that i've never even thought of before. I thought it was interesting when he was talking to the psychologist Martha Stout and she addressed the reader by saying, "if you're reading this and wondering if you are a psychopath, you aren't one."