Psychopath vs Sociopath: What's the Difference?

Articles on poorly behaved people and ways to recognise them are everywhere. You need not search Google or scroll for long before finding headlines such as 7 signs your boss is a psychopath or How to avoid the sociopath next door.

The words psychopath and sociopath are frequently treated as though they mean the same thing. This is true even of arguably the best-known badly behaved fictional figure: Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs.

In the novel that inspired the film, Lecter is called a "pure sociopath". In the film, however, he is labelled a "pure psychopath". Psychiatrists have given him an entirely different diagnosis.

What, then, separates a psychopath from a sociopath?

As we will explore, the labels have been used at various points in history and refer to concepts that partly overlap.

What is a psychopath?

Psychopathy has appeared in psychiatric writing since the 19th century. Yet the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, commonly called the DSM, does not identify it as a recognised clinical disorder.

Terminology has shifted since the 1950s. Terms including "sociopathic personality disturbance" were replaced by antisocial personality disorder, the diagnosis used today.

A person with antisocial personality disorder persistently disregards other people's rights. This may involve law-breaking, habitual lying, impulsive conduct, fighting, ignoring safety, irresponsible actions and indifference to the outcomes of their behaviour.

Adding further complexity, the DSM section covering antisocial personality disorder refers to psychopathic, and sociopathic, traits. Put another way, the DSM treats these traits as features of antisocial personality disorder rather than mental disorders in their own right.

US psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley offered the first formal account of psychopathic traits in his 1941 book The Mask of Sanity.

His account drew on clinical observations of nine male patients at a psychiatric hospital. He highlighted several central features: superficial charm, unreliability, and an absence of remorse or shame.

Canadian psychologist Professor Robert Hare developed these features further, stressing interpersonal, emotional and lifestyle qualities alongside the antisocial behaviours set out in the DSM.

Taken together, this evidence suggests that a psychopath manipulates people, displays superficial charm, has grandiose views of themselves and deceives others consistently. Their emotional features include limited emotion and empathy, indifference towards others' suffering, and a failure to take responsibility for the effects of their behaviour on other people.

A psychopath may also become bored easily, live off other people, have no goals and behave irresponsibly on an ongoing basis.

What about a sociopath?

The label sociopath first emerged in the 1930s and was credited to US psychologist George Partridge. His focus was on the social consequences of conduct that repeatedly infringes the rights of others.

Researchers and clinicians often used sociopath and psychopath as interchangeable terms. Others favoured sociopath, however, because they believed the public could mistake psychopath for psychosis.

The first DSM, published in 1952, used the phrase "sociopathic personality disturbance". This reflected the dominant view that antisocial behaviour was largely shaped by the social environment, and that behaviour was deemed deviant only when it violated social, legal and/or cultural norms.

Some early accounts of sociopathy more closely resemble what is now termed antisocial personality disorder. Others concern emotional features akin to those in Cleckley's 1941 description of a psychopath.

Put simply, sociopathy meant different things to different people and remains less clearly defined than psychopathy, even now. As a result, no single definition of sociopathy can be offered today. Broadly speaking, though, its antisocial behaviours can resemble those associated with psychopathy.

Over time, sociopathy became less favoured as a term. From the late 1960s onwards, psychiatrists used antisocial personality disorder instead.

Born or made?

Both "sociopathy", now called antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy have been linked to a broad range of developmental, biological and psychological factors.

For instance, people with psychopathic traits show particular brain differences, especially in areas connected with emotion, behavioural inhibition and problem-solving. They also seem to have nervous-system differences, including a lower heart rate.

Sociopathy and its antisocial behaviours, however, are shaped by a person's social environment and tend to occur within families. Such behaviours have been linked with physical abuse and conflict between parents.

What are the consequences?

Despite fictional depictions, including Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs and Villanelle in the television series Killing Eve, not everyone with psychopathic or sociopathic traits is a serial killer or physically violent.

Nevertheless, psychopathy is a predictor of many damaging behaviours. Within the criminal justice system, it is strongly associated with reoffending, particularly violent reoffending.

Among the wider population, psychopathy is linked to drug dependence, homelessness and other personality disorders. Some studies have also found that psychopathy predicted a failure to comply with COVID restrictions.

Sociopathy, by contrast, is less firmly established as an important risk factor for recognising people at an increased risk of harming others. Nor is sociopathy a dependable predictor of future antisocial conduct.

In brief

Formal psychiatric diagnostic manuals do not classify either psychopathy or sociopathy as mental disorders. Both are personality traits connected to antisocial behaviours and to certain interpersonal, emotional and lifestyle features.

Psychopathy is considered to have genetic, biological and psychological foundations that put a person at greater risk of violating the rights of others. Sociopathy, in contrast, is less precisely defined, while its antisocial behaviours arise from a person's social environment.

Of the two, psychopathy is more useful for identifying someone most likely to harm others.

Bruce Watt, Associate Professor in Psychology, Bond University and Katarina Fritzon, Associate Professor of Psychology, Bond University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.