Both are part of the Antisocial Personality Disorder.
The interest about psychopaths and sociopaths transcends fiction, there are many famous psychopaths who have amassed people’s attention, such as Ted Bundy, Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer.
Both psychopathy and sociopathy belong to the spectrum of antisocial personality disorder , a pathology that affects the way people think, feel, perceive or their way of relating to the rest of the population.
In this article, we will talk about the main differences between a sociopath and a psychopath, based on the current framework of medical knowledge about these personality disorders.
What characteristics do psychopaths and sociopaths have?
Those people we would consider to be psychopaths or sociopaths are also known in the medical community as people with antisocial personality disorder.
Not all people with this disorder are necessarily considered psychopaths or sociopaths, but it is likely that they share some traits with these pathological personalities.
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Within the main characteristics that both psychopaths and sociopaths can present, as described by the DSM-5 (The manual used for the diagnosis and obtaining statistics of mental disorders), we would find:
- Chronic criminal tendencies
- Constant lies and manipulation
- Impulsiveness
- Aggressive and/or violent tendencies
- Lack of concern for the safety of others
- Lack of personal responsibility, for example financially.
- No feelings of guilt or regret
A person can be considered affected by an antisocial personality disorder if they present 3 or more of these characteristics . This represents approximately 1% to 4% of the general population, with both sociopaths and psychopaths being a smaller portion of people with this personality disorder.
Those who suffer from antisocial personality disorder are people who tend to have characteristics that are unpleasant for the people around them, which makes it difficult to form and maintain emotional bonds. There is a wide spectrum in terms of the intensity of the disorder, with psychopaths being extreme parts of it.
7 differences between sociopathy and psychopathy
Despite being both diseases part of antisocial personality disorder, there are marked differences between psychopaths and sociopaths, both in how they perceive the world around them, their emotions, as well as their behaviors.
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Among the main differences between psychopaths and sociopaths we can highlight:
1. Lack of moral conscience
Most of us have a part of our personality that prevents us from hurting others, since we are able to put ourselves in their place and imagine that we would not like to be hurt. This mechanism is conspicuously absent in psychopathic people .
Sociopaths, on the other hand, do have a moral conscience , but it is “weakened.” A sociopathic person may feel bad about doing an action that causes harm to other people, but is not able to listen to the part of himself that tells him not to do it. This causes all kinds of complicated internal conflicts, which feed the pathology.
Psychopaths, despite their greater lack of empathy, often go unnoticed by society . This is because many of them are adept in the art of imitating the usual reactions that other people have in specific situations. They feel no remorse, but they know how to fake it.
2. Levels of empathy
Both sociopaths and psychopaths suffer from a lack of empathy . This means that they have a hard time imagining how other people might feel. In the case of psychopathic people, this lack of empathy can be practically total.
3. Response to violence
Neither psychopaths nor sociopaths are necessarily violent people , despite the fact that there is a great tendency to violence within antisocial personality disorder. In fact, an estimated 93% of adult male psychopaths in the US are in the prison system, either in prison or on parole, though not always for violent crimes.
When a psychopathic person sees the pain of others, his physical reaction is different from that of other people . A classic example that is exposed in these cases is that of the psychopath who goes to the cinema to see a violent film; while a psychologically normal person would see their heart rate accelerate and sweat more, the psychopath has the opposite reaction, they calm down.
4. Different severity within the same spectrum
As we have mentioned before, both psychopaths and sociopaths are considered to be people who suffer from some version of antisocial personality disorder.
Psychopathy is considered by many experts to be a very severe version of antisocial personality disorder, while sociopathy corresponds to a milder personality disorder with fewer symptoms.
5. Addictive trends
There are also differences regarding the mental illnesses that accompany each of these disorders. Sociopathic people are much more impulsive than psychopathic people . This makes sociopaths much more vulnerable to also contracting disorders of dependence on addictive substances, such as nicotine or alcohol.
6. Impulsivity
Psychopaths are characterized by, normally, being quite cold and calculating. Both psychopaths and sociopaths can manipulate others for their own benefit , but psychopaths will do so in a much more targeted way than sociopaths, who have a more impulsive and erratic way of acting.
The crimes committed by most sociopaths are due to strong and difficult to control emotions or unexpected situations handled in a destructive way for them or their environment.
On the other hand, psychopaths are able to control themselves much more effectively than sociopaths, which allows them to integrate into society more easily, which they take advantage of to fulfill their objectives.
7. Differences at the brain level
Psychopaths have marked structural differences in the brain that explain their strange personalities.
Comparisons made between the brains of psychopathic prisoners and prisoners who had committed similar crimes, without being psychopaths, show marked differences in the structure of parts of the brain involved in memory, emotions and behavior, such as the cerebral amygdala, the hippocampus or the limbic cortex.
Bibliographic references
- Kiehl, K. A., & Hoffman, M. B. (2011). THE CRIMINAL PSYCHOPATH: HISTORY, NEUROSCIENCE, TREATMENT, AND ECONOMICS. Jurimetrics, 51, 355–397.
- Blonigen, D. M., Hicks, B. M., Krueger, R. F., Patrick, C. J., & Iacono, W. G. (2005). Psychopathic personality traits: heritability and genetic overlap with internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Psychological medicine, 35(5), 637–648. doi:10.1017/s0033291704004180.
- Hunter P. (2010). The psycho gene. EMBO reports, 11(9), 667–669. doi:10.1038/embor.2010.122.
To the classic question “what do you do?” I always answer “basically I am a psychologist”. In fact, my academic training has revolved around the psychology of development, education and community, a field of study influenced my volunteer activities, as well as my first work experiences in personal services.
