The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson
Published 2011 · 286 pages · 72,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage, Nonfiction, Psychology, Satire & Humor
How hard is The Psychopath Test to read?
The Psychopath Test scores 21 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Psychological terms explained conversationally.
- Sentence structure: 22 out of 100
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- Psychological concepts through reported stories.
- Information density: 38 out of 100
- Entertaining balance of research and anecdote.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Multiple stories building an argument about diagnosis itself.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- The checklist as symbol of diagnostic power.
- Ironic distance: 22 out of 100
- Ronson's self-aware neurotic narrator voice.
- Resolution withholding: 18 out of 100
- Ends questioning the entire enterprise of diagnosis.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Chronological investigation with thematic digressions.
How The Psychopath Test is regarded
The Psychopath Test holds a literary regard score of 37 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.