Jon Ronson: Strange answers to the psychopath test (March 2012)

Jon Ronson raises a good point about our desire to label people. I often do think that once we believe someone has an illness, we continue to read any behaviour as a sign that we are right. This has a name – confirmation bias. In some of my placements, I did wonder if we often noted something down as a sign of a mental problem, when it could simply be explained by the circumstances. For example, working with teenagers, it’s normal for them to try and rebel against the authority, and don’t most teenagers feel like being lazy sometimes?