Books like The Psychopath Test

01

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

Philip Zimbardo · Psychology

Philip Zimbardo designed the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, then watched it spin out of control within days.

Both dig into power.

02

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

Leonard Mlodinow · Psychology

Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist who writes accessible science for general audiences.

A kindred psychology read.

03

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson · Psychology

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson wrote this book about the mechanisms by which people protect their sense of themselves as competent, moral, and well-intentioned after they have done something that contradicts that self-image.

A kindred psychology read.

04

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson · Psychology

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson argue that human behavior is much more self-interested and much less high-minded than the explanations people give for it.

A kindred psychology read.

05

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Robert Whitaker · Health

Anatomy of an Epidemic is Robert Whitaker's investigation into a paradox: as the use of psychiatric medication in the United States has increased dramatically over the past half-century, the number of people on disability due to mental illness has risen in parallel.

Shares psychiatry and mental illness with The Psychopath Test.

06

Brain Energy

Christopher M. Palmer · Health

Brain Energy is Christopher Palmer's argument that mental illness is fundamentally a metabolic disorder — specifically, a disorder of mitochondrial function and brain energy regulation.

Shares psychiatry and mental illness with The Psychopath Test.

07

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Randolph M. Nesse · Psychology

Randolph Nesse spent forty years as a psychiatrist and evolutionary biologist asking a question most of his colleagues found strange: why did natural selection leave us so vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other forms of suffering?

Both dig into psychiatry.

08

The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between

Abigail Marsh · Psychology

Abigail Marsh is a Georgetown neuroscientist who studies why some people are extraordinarily altruistic and others are not.

Both dig into psychopathy.

09

The Laws of Human Nature

Robert Greene · Psychology

Robert Greene is a writer whose career has been built on synthesizing historical biography and social observation into frameworks for understanding power, strategy, and human behavior.

Both dig into power.

10

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

Thomas Szasz · Psychology

Thomas Szasz's thesis, first published in 1961, is that mental illness is a category error.

Both dig into psychiatry.

11

A Beautiful Mind

Sylvia Nasar · Biography

Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash — Nobel laureate, game theory pioneer, and paranoid schizophrenic — is one of the finest accounts of genius and mental illness in biographical literature.

Both dig into mental illness.

12

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn · History

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, first published in 1980, retells American history from the perspective of those who rarely appear in conventional textbooks: Native Americans, enslaved people, industrial workers, women, immigrants, and dissidents of various kinds.

Both dig into power.