Differences in writing a psychopath vs sociopath:
I'll start this post off by saying that I am in no way an expert on ASPD, I'm just a girl who has written psychopath and sociopath characters and done some research, so take what I say with a grain of salt, and I recommend doing your own research before writing a character!
If you wanna skip the parapraphs, there's bulletpoints of the differences at the end of this post.
First off, what is ASPD? Anti-Social Personality Disorder is described as a personality disorder where the person exhibits a chronic pattern of behaviors that disregard the rights and well-being of others, their behavior conflicts with social norms, and affects their interpersonal relationships.
Something I've seen written into many iconic psychopathic characters is sadism, which is when someone feels pleasure when they humiliate and hurt others.
And while yes, based off of these descriptions ASPD and sadism seem to go hand in hand, this isn't the case. Not every psychopath/sociopath is a sadist, and this is important to keep in mind when writing ASPD characters.
Another important thing is that ASPD characters, psychopaths in particular, are not smarter than your average person, as in - someone isn't smart because they're a psychopath.
ASPD characters, as you could've guess, generally have low emotional intelligence, meaning that it's very likely that an ASPD character would struggle with hypothetical scenarios, or putting themselves in others shoes, because the ability to comprehend a hypothetical scenario is associated with empathy, which is associated with general intelligence.
Now for more specific differences.
A distinction that I like to personally keep between my characters is that they can be born psychopaths, but a sociopath is created by ceratin enviroments.
This means that a psychopath can be rehabilitated and taught to follow certain social norms, the same does not apply to a sociopath.
Going off of this fact we can also say that a psychopath can be aware of the fact that they are a psychopath, a sociopath cannot.
Now let's take a step back, just because they can be aware of their personality disorder doesn't mean they will suddenly be able to experience empathy or feel love, it just means that they can follow the necessary steps to be able to live and function normally.
Both psychopaths and sociopaths are impulsive, but I've noticed that sociopaths tend to be a lot more egotistical, they generally care more about what people around them think, psychopaths do not.
Which furthers my belief that sociopaths are created and not born.
Both psychopaths and sociopaths are able to understand the feelings of others, but in a much more scietntific way. For example, if someone is to get hurt, they would not be able to empathize, but they would be able to understand that right now this person is hurt because they stubbed their toe, and toe-stubbing is generally described to hurt.
This may seem like a normal thought process, but it's not, to understand this let's quickly dive into mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons, from what I've read, are described to be in charge of making us feel emapthy. You, as someone who can feel empathy, will not go through your logical understanding of why toe-stubbing hurts, but instead you would feel - mirror - what the toe-stubbing victim feels, maybe you wince in pain even though you haven't felt it, maybe you say ow then ask if they're alright.
Psychopaths and sociopaths are unable to experience this instant understanding of someone being hurt, and that is one of the most important details to keep in mind when writing one.
Now that I've yapped, let me add some bulletpoints before I conclude this post:
- Sociopaths are prone to emotional outbursts, psychopaths are not.
- Sociopaths have the (small) capacity to feel empathy and guilt, psychopaths do not.
- Psychopaths can be made aware of their disorder, sociopaths can not.
- Sociopaths are generally more impulsive.
- Sociopaths tend to display more criminal behavior than psychopaths.
- Psychopaths have more manipulative tendecies, but both can be manipulative.
- Psychopaths can generally control their behavior better than sociopaths.
- Violence is always high in sociopaths, but varies with psychopaths.
- Sociopaths try to rationalize their wrong actions, psychopaths do not.
- Sociopaths are generally a product of their enviroment, psychopaths are born with the disorder.
- Psychopaths feel no remorse, sociopaths are capable of feeling little remorse.
- Psychopaths are able to remain calm under pressure, sociopaths are not.
While writing characters with ASPD always keep in mind that they are not monsters, they can be horrible people or the best friend of your protagonist, characters with ASPD can be very fun to write and read if done well. Do not make them monsters, do not make them one-sided, they are human beings, write them as such.
Be creative, give them motivations, give them quirks and personality traits unrelated to their disorder.
Maybe some of this advice will help, maybe it won't, either way, I hope this feline has enlightened you!
