Sociopath Community

A common misconception I see on the internet is the false equivalency of narcissists and sociopaths. The goal of this post is to show the differences in how they interact, and how it coincides with the DSM definitions of the two disorders. Lastly, I will show the differences between the two in the "big five" personality traits model, or the OCEAN model.

 So first, I will show the DSM definitions of both.

Just from this, you can tell that that ASPD and NPD are distinctly different. In fact, I struggle to even find similarities to them beside their cluster B categorization.

 Right off the bat, they are different pervasive patterns. NPD is more related to having a large ego and wanting to be admired by other people, ASPD is simply not caring about other people or their boundaries. This by default means that people with NPD are FAR more likely to engage in behaviors that people actually like and to some extent, regard others. In other words, narcissists are more likely to engage in "prosocial" behavior. Sociopaths are not.

 The devil is in the details in this comparison. Narcissists have a "lack of empathy", the ability to relate to the thoughts and feelings of others. Sociopaths do not lack empathy, they lack remorse. In narcissists you see a social obliviousness not unlike what you would see in asperger's syndrome, so they do not necessarily mean to hurt people. Sociopaths on the other hand, know what they did and merely do not feel bad for it and come up with a reason it was ok. For example, a sociopath might take glee in the pain of others and hate the idea of caring about anyone, while a narcissist may have a strong and unbending set of morals and apply them in a misguided way because they do not consider the morals of others.

 There is also a difference in the way they go about manipulation. Sociopaths engage in direct deceitfulness, meaning they very consciously manipulate others in oftentimes brutal ways to get what they want. Narcissists may do the same thing but not realize they are doing it. An example is- a narcissist may use a person for "supply" but not think about it that way, while a sociopath may get in a relationship with someone with willful intent to use them for money.

Void from the NPD criteria are things that could seriously compromise success in one's career. In fact, narcissism is often correlated with high intelligence and economic success. This could be attributed to their high confidence and grandiose "fantasies" coupled with a need to be admired. The narcissist may choose to pursue these "fantasies" through an interest or career in hopes of gaining the adoration in doing so, and due to their high motivation actually achieve something relatively significant in pursuit of the grandiose fantasy. As for intelligence, this could be because intelligent people who are aware they are intelligent may develop narcissistic traits in response to that knowledge.

This is not so much the case for sociopaths, due to several behaviors indicated in the DSM that could have a severe detriment on one's sociopolitical upward mobility. Most prominently is the criminal component coupled with aggressiveness. This creates a propensity for violent crime that can result in offenses that exclude the afflicted from many career and educational opportunities. Combine irresponsibility with impulsivity; actions such as scamming people out of a large sum of money then spending all of it on hedonistic gains for a short period of time, and you get a behavior pattern that constantly sets one back in life. And due to the lack of remorse, they don't care about this. From this analysis it is clear to me that for those with this behavior pattern, it will be a difficult road to success in comparison with the more driven NPD behavior pattern.

 Looking to the five factor OCEAN personality traits model, they found these results for those with psychopathy, which falls under ASPD-

 (Factor 1 — cold traits) callousness, charm, low empathy
Is most strongly associated with low agreeableness.
 (Factor 2 — hot traits) impulsivity, instability, and social defiance :
Is associated with low Agreeableness, low Conscientiousness, and high Neuroticism.

 Now, for narcissistic personality disorder-

 Low agreeableness (a feature shared with all the Dark Triad personalities)
 Low neuroticism
 Very high extroversion
somewhat high conscientiousness and openness to experience

So, both have low agreeableness but as I pointed out this is more due to obliviousness in NPD, and not caring in ASPD. However, people with NPD are lower in neuroticism than psychopaths. This is interesting, given the apparently lack of remorse commonly seen in psychopaths. Could it be that there IS some underlying insecurity (which some may claim to be in narcissism, which interestingly has lower neuroticism) in psychopathy? I can't say if or if not. Nevertheless, it was worth noting. Conscientiousness is lower in psychopathy and high in narcissism. This is unsurprising given the impulsivity and irresponsibility, and the motivating factors for success found in narcissists.

As you can see, the ocean model falls in line with my comparison of the two disorders using the DSM to guide me quite well.

In conclusion-

1. Narcissists have conflict with others due to obliviousness sourced from a lack of empathy, while sociopaths have conflict with others because they do not care either way.

2. Sociopaths engage in behaviors that are not synonymous with success such as criminality, impulsivity, and irresponsibility, while narcissists are often successful due to their grandiose fantasies and need for admiration serving as motivation and propensity to be somebody with high intelligence.

I hope you enjoyed my analysis on this subject.

 Sources-

https://medium.com/@ drengelbrecht.rp.nd/what-are-those-differences-the-big-five-test-shows-for-various-conditions-autism-aspd-npd-bpd-f92c501c4997

 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/narcissists-are-irritating-and-attention-seeking-but-successful-2018-6