There's a good chance that you know a psychopath, and not the unmistakable maniacs with severed head collections in their fishtanks, or even that one guy who sucks his teeth like Hannibal Lector in your ear while you're waiting for the bus. It's your girlfriend; your husband; the love of your life; the childhood friend you know inside-out, or even that painfully arrogant guy at work whose mere presence conjures a whirlwind of disgusting swearwords in your head. Could those close to you possibly be clinical psychopaths? Surely not... but then, how do you REALLY know? According to Jon Ronson, author of 'The Psychopath Test', one out of every 100 people walking around are psychopaths, meaning they have a deformity in their amygdala (the bit that controls key emotions like fear and guilt.) Only twenty-five percent of the prison population make up the psychopathic community, and a low four percent of corporate chiefs. So the psychos making up the rest of the statistics could well be sharing your bed. And watching you sleep, probably. Seeing as we're a charitable lot, we're offering a fool-proof guide to finding out whether someone you know and love is indeed a few steps away from making your face into a hat. The points that follow are part of psychologist Robert Hare's Checklist of Psychopathy Symptoms: if someone you know fits them, run away, if they don't, it's probably you who's the psycho...
