Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren Volabahm. Here.
Speaker 1: Popular media and social media alike are full of casual
Speaker 1: diagnoses of sociopathy and psychopathy. You've probably heard these terms
Speaker 1: come up in everything from true crime podcasts to horror
Speaker 1: films to advice articles like seven Signs You're Dating a Sociopath.
Speaker 1: According to a therapist, the words sociopath and psychopath are
Speaker 1: both often used to describe someone who does things for
Speaker 1: personal gain or who hurts other people, from telling lies
Speaker 1: to stealing to committing grizzly violent crimes. But what do
Speaker 1: these terms actually mean? Talk to various mental health providers
Speaker 1: and psychological researchers, and you may get different answers before
Speaker 1: the article. This episode is based on How Stuff Work.
Speaker 1: Spoke via email psychotherapist Terry Cole. She said the terms
Speaker 1: are often used interchangeably in popular literature, chronology writing, and
Speaker 1: within the media at large, but they are not diagnostic
Speaker 1: terms and not exactly the same. That means that you
Speaker 1: won't find the definition for psychopath or sociopath in the
Speaker 1: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because doctors don't
Speaker 1: give an official diagnosis for psychopath or sociopath. Instead, they
Speaker 1: may diagnose someone with antisocial personality disorder. This is a
Speaker 1: mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no
Speaker 1: regard for moralistic concepts of right and wrong. Also displays
Speaker 1: a profound lack of empathy and a dominant self importance.
Speaker 1: How stuff works also spoke by email with Eileen Anderson,
Speaker 1: a professor of bioethics an adjunct professor of psychiatry in
Speaker 1: the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. She said,
Speaker 1: typically sociopathy and psychopathy are lay terms to describe what
Speaker 1: gets diagnosed as antisocial personality disorder. However, other personality disorders,
Speaker 1: such as narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder could
Speaker 1: be invoked to the extent that there's a difference between
Speaker 1: a quote unquote psychopath and a sociopath. Anderson explained that
Speaker 1: research indicates that those whom lay people refer to as
Speaker 1: sociopaths might feel some remorse proceed with antisocial behavior that
Speaker 1: fits their agendas anyway. Meanwhile, by common definitions, quote psychopaths
Speaker 1: feel no conscience or remorse for risky behavior. They feel
Speaker 1: entitled to achieve their personal goals, even when those goals
Speaker 1: might include acts that most would include as unconscionable, such
Speaker 1: as lying, stealing, assault, or even killing someone. When you
Speaker 1: hear the word psychopath, you might think of pop culture
Speaker 1: examples of villains from movies or books like Hannibal Lecter,
Speaker 1: a person who has violent tendencies and seems to enjoy
Speaker 1: hurting others. The latter quality is referred to as sadism.
Speaker 1: These two traits are not the same thing, but they
Speaker 1: are correlated, That is, they tend to appear with one another.
Speaker 1: In general, mental disorders don't fit neat labels, partially because
Speaker 1: we're developing and updating our understanding of mental health all
Speaker 1: the time. For example, the term psychopath was coined as
Speaker 1: psychopastiche by German psychiatrist J. L. A. Cock in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight to describe subjects with a tendency to hurt
Speaker 1: themselves or others. It was a characteristic that he believed
Speaker 1: someone was born with Another German psychiatrist Karl Bernbaum observed
Speaker 1: the same sort of pervasive pattern of antisocial behavior, but
Speaker 1: felt it was caused by societal forces that made it
Speaker 1: difficult for young adults to learn a more acceptable way
Speaker 1: to act. He came up with a different term, sociopathy
Speaker 1: to describe this in nineteen o nine. American psychologist George E.
Speaker 1: Partridge helped popularize the term in the nineteen thirties. Over
Speaker 1: the years, both terms were used in psychological literature, sometimes interchangeably,
Speaker 1: but again, neither of these terms are used as a
Speaker 1: diagnosis today. How Stuff Works also spoke with David Schester,
Speaker 1: an associate professor of social psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University
Speaker 1: whose research focuses upon understanding the psychological and biological processes
Speaker 1: that motivate and constrain aggressive behavior. He explained, we're referring
Speaker 1: to what we call a psychological construct or trait. People
Speaker 1: can't be reduced down to a single trait, so instead
Speaker 1: of using the term psychopath, for example, he might describe
Speaker 1: someone as having high psychopathy. He said, it's a dimension
Speaker 1: of personality, kind of a cluster of traits, the same
Speaker 1: way that extraversion is a personality dimension. Psychopathy really reflects
Speaker 1: what we call an antagonistic disposition, in which my own
Speaker 1: desires and wishes and things like that are placed well
Speaker 1: above the well being and desires and outcomes of other people.
Speaker 1: The most common Psychopathic traits include negative affect or neuroticism,
Speaker 1: detachment or low extraversion, disinhibition or low conscientiousness, and antagonism
Speaker 1: or low agreeableness. Chester said that the hallmark feature of
Speaker 1: psychopathy is a quote callous indifference to other people's suffering.
Speaker 1: That is, where most people who see someone else in
Speaker 1: pain might experience an empathetic or sympathetic response. A person
Speaker 1: with a high degree of psychopathy might feel a blunted
Speaker 1: reaction or a lack of empathy. Altogether, the portrayal of
Speaker 1: these and similar traits in popular culture definitely muddles the definitions.
Speaker 1: You may have seen sociopathy described as volatile and impulsive
Speaker 1: and psychopaths as cold and heartless, but again, they are
Speaker 1: not two distinct disorders, and these tendencies are highly correlated.
Speaker 1: The same person might act like a hothead and lash
Speaker 1: out in some situations, but at other times behave cunning
Speaker 1: and stone cold. Chester said, instead of being hot and
Speaker 1: cold versions of the antagonistic personality, it's really that these
Speaker 1: are two strategies occurring in the same individual. At the
Speaker 1: core of both is a basic antagonism and indifference to
Speaker 1: others well being, especially when it comes to one's own
Speaker 1: personal gain. But again, traits like antagonism and personal attachment
Speaker 1: are found in varying degrees in different people, along with
Speaker 1: other less scary or even admirable traits. Chester said, in
Speaker 1: the overall population, one or two percent of people have
Speaker 1: serious diagnosable levels of psychopathic tendencies. But that's not to
Speaker 1: say that outside of that, psychopathy isn't an important critical
Speaker 1: trait that people have varying degrees of. A person who
Speaker 1: has a high degree of psychopathy might even seem kind
Speaker 1: and pathetic in some situations. I think of Tony Soprano,
Speaker 1: the likable fictional mobster who's the protagonist of the TV
Speaker 1: series The Sopranos. He's capable of forming attachments and being
Speaker 1: an affectionate father. He even cares about the welfare of
Speaker 1: a family of ducks living in a swimming pool, but
Speaker 1: has no qualms about killing an ex mobster who's turned
Speaker 1: to government witness, or about beating up a guy for
Speaker 1: dating his ex a. Chester said, Tony Soprano is not
Speaker 1: a paradoxical character. He's very realistic and that sometimes he's nice,
Speaker 1: sometimes he's not interested. He's honestly one of the better
Speaker 1: examples of psychopathy because he displays it in all its messiness.
Speaker 1: A mental health professionals debate whether people with the high
Speaker 1: degree of psychopathy lack empathy or sympathy, or whether they
Speaker 1: have the ability but choose not to use it. According
Speaker 1: to Chester, the can't feel camp has been the dominant narrative,
Speaker 1: but he be a growing number of other researchers think
Speaker 1: the choice does fact. During the equation, he explained that
Speaker 1: brain scans of subjects with psychopathies show they not only
Speaker 1: have empathetic circuits, but they do use them, though not
Speaker 1: necessarily in the way that most of us do, and
Speaker 1: individual psychopathic tendencies might want to understand someone else's pain
Speaker 1: not because they want to help, but because that knowledge
Speaker 1: would enable them to hurt someone in the future more
Speaker 1: effectively if that helps get them something that they want today.
Speaker 1: We still don't know who will or won't develop antisocial
Speaker 1: personality disorder. There's no single cause. Instead, research indicates that
Speaker 1: it results from a complex combination of genetic factors and
Speaker 1: environmental factors, including early family life and emotional attachments to
Speaker 1: parents during childhood. As with any mental health issue, if
Speaker 1: you're concerned about yourself or someone you care for, reach
Speaker 1: out to a healthcare professional for more resources. We are,
Speaker 1: after all, just a podcast. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article What's the Difference between a Sociopath and a Psychopath?
Speaker 1: On HowStuffWorks dot com written by Patrick J. Higer. Brainstuff
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