So as we’ve seen, recent studies have shown that those with Antisocial Personality Disorder, when describing events that involved a strong, personal, emotional reaction (such as love, hate, envy, joy, etc.), will use more adjectives, adverbs, and more evocative nouns to describe their own feelings, and the words used are an equal mix of positive and negative in terms of association. People with ASPD recognise their own emotions and feelings quite well, but don't want an emotional response from others - that is, a sociopath isn't going to start crying and then say "Look! I'm crying!", but they'll tell you later about when they cried, what it felt like and why it happened, not wanting your emotional reaction, but perhaps accidentally getting one in the process of telling you the story (not saying they won’t then go on to exploit that reaction if necessary, but stay with me here).
Now, conflating sociopathy with autism is extremely fucked up and wrong for everyone involved, but in light of this, it's also absolutely fucking nonsensical to picture the sociopath in your head as basically Evil Rainman. Maybe in a film, sure, but not in real life. Autism and ASPD do share issues with empathy but they work in opposite directions - someone on the spectrum will have a hard time identifying and recognising the emotions of others (cognitive empathy) but can feel the feelings of others (affective empathy) very well, sometimes overwhelmingly so, to a point where it becomes unbearable and meltdowns/shutdowns can occur.
Conversely, people with ASPD don't outwardly appear to have any issue with empathy at all, they can recognise emotions and "read the room" alarmingly well, they can identify what other people are thinking and feeling maybe more so than others, but the affective part, feeling it along with them, is what's missing. If you know someone who seems uncomfortable dealing with other people's feelings and you've told yourself they're a sociopath, you might instead be dealing with someone on the spectrum, and it's bad enough you call antisocials sociopaths based on fantasy, but it's fucked up even more when you go shooting that name off to people with autistic spectrum disorders too because of what a film told you.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not saying emotionally cold and detached sociopaths don't exist, but I am saying they've learned to hide it much better than you think, and if the sociopath isn't violent, they'll go undetected maybe forever. You haven't outsmarted the sociopath(s) in your life, you may think you have, but you've secretly diagnosed the wrong guy. The sociopath in your life is blending in quietly, being a good friend to you, and always knows the right emotional response to what you're saying, and they can demonstrate this response very emotionally and eloquently.
As we all know at this point, ASPD is the main diagnosis of people deemed to be "sociopaths" or "psychopaths" (these two words as diagnoses don't exist, no doctor will ever tell anyone they suffer from sociopathy/psychopathy, however they're words that we now use as they're so ingrained in our psyches, and words that should be reclaimed by sociopaths, in my honest opinion). But given this new information, we need yet again to rethink what we think we're talking about when we describe the SOCIOPATHIC EX BOYFRIEND or PSYCHO BOSS or whatever in our lives. When you talk about that sociopath you had the misfortune of knowing, and you talk about how dead they were behind the eyes or how soulless they seemed, how robotic and inhuman, or any other of those buzz-phrases you’ve picked up from the TV, you're not describing a sociopath. You're describing something Hollywood has invented and you have carried on imagining and built up your own fantasy. You know a sociopath, maybe you know two or three, and trust me, when they tell you stories about how they've felt, you've never heard anyone with so much heart. You love them and their wise soul, and believe it or not, they really might love you too.
So, my tip is to stop diagnosing sociopaths in your head, because 1. it's hilariously offensive and even mental health professionals can go years and years mistaking a client's ASPD for several other things so there's no chance you're accidentally catching it after hearing about someone and their exploits a couple of times, and 2. it's not your job to, and it's not important for you to, and if it is important to you, maybe don't be friends with that person if your opinion of them is so low, lest they murder you in your sleep or whatever it is you've told yourself about them. You don’t get to constantly judge and scrutinise people based on something you’ve imagined that you know, and then wonder why they’ve come to detest you, or maybe even fuck you over. They’re probably not even a sociopath, they’ve probably just had enough of your patronising bullshit. Get help.
