"Psychopath" and "sociopath" are popular ways of describing the violent monsters born of our worst nightmares. Think Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, Norman Bates in Psycho, and Annie Wilkes in Misery.
Most of us, fortunately, will never meet a Hannibal Lecter in real life, but psychopaths and sociopaths certainly exist. And they hide among us—sometimes as the most successful people in society because they’re often ruthless, callous, and superficially charming while having little or no regard for the feelings or needs of others.
These are known as “successful” psychopaths, as they have a tendency to perform premeditated crimes with calculated risk. Or they may manipulate someone else into breaking the law, while keeping themselves safely at a distance. They’re master manipulators of other peoples’ feelings, but are unable to experience emotions themselves.
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Odds are, you might just know one—at least one. Prevalence rates come in somewhere between 0.2 and 3.3 percent of the population. (If you’re worried about yourself, you can take a quiz to find out, but before you click on that link, let me save you some time: You’re probably not a psychopath or sociopath. If you were, it's doubtful you'd be interested in taking that personality test. You just wouldn’t be that self-aware or concerned about your character flaws. That’s why both psychopathy and sociopathy are known as anti-social personality disorders, which are long-term mental health conditions.
What’s the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?
Psychopaths and sociopaths share a number of characteristics, including a lack of remorse or empathy for others, a lack of guilt or ability to take responsibility for their actions, a disregard for laws or social conventions, and an inclination to violence. A core feature of both is a deceitful and manipulative nature. But how can we tell them apart?
Sociopaths are normally less emotionally stable and highly impulsive—their behavior tends to be more erratic than psychopaths. When committing crimes—either violent or non-violent—sociopaths will act more on compulsion. And they will lack patience, giving in much more easily to impulsiveness and lacking detailed planning.
Psychopaths, on the other hand, will plan their crimes down to the smallest detail, taking calculated risks to avoid detection. The smart ones will leave few clues that may lead to being caught. Psychopaths don’t get carried away in the moment and make fewer mistakes as a result.
Both act on a continuum of behaviors, and many psychologists still debate whether the two should be differentiated at all. But for those who do differentiate between the two, one thing is largely agreed upon: psychiatrists use the term psychopathy to illustrate that the cause of the anti-social personality disorder is hereditary. Sociopathy describes behaviors that are the result of a brain injury, or abuse and/or neglect in childhood.
Psychopaths are born and sociopaths are made. In essence, their difference reflects the nature versus nurture debate. There’s a particularly interesting link between serial killers and psychopaths or sociopaths—although, of course, not all psychopaths and sociopaths become serial killers. And not all serial killers are psychopaths or sociopaths.
But America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has noted certain traits shared between known serial killers and these anti-social personality disorders. These include predatory behavior (for instance, Ivan Milat, who hunted and murdered his seven victims); sensation-seeking (think hedonistic killers who murder for excitement or arousal, such as 21-year-old Thomas Hemming who, in 2014, murdered two people just to know what it felt like to kill); lack of remorse; impulsivity; and the need for control or power over others (such as Dennis Rader, an American serial killer who murdered ten people between 1974 and 1991, and became known as the “BTK (bind, torture, kill) killer”).
The Sydney murder of Morgan Huxley by 22-year-old Jack Kelsall, who arguably shows all the hallmarks of a psychopath, highlights the differences between psychopaths and sociopaths.
In 2013, Kelsall followed Huxley home where he indecently assaulted the 31-year-old before stabbing him 28 times. Kelsall showed no remorse for his crime, which was extremely violent and pre-meditated.
Although the murder was frenzied, Kelsall showed patience and planning, leaving little doubt that he’s psychopathic rather than sociopathic. He had followed potential victims before and had shared fantasies he had about murdering a stranger with a knife with his psychiatrist a year before he killed Huxley, allegedly for “the thrill of it”.
Whatever Kelsall’s motive, regardless of whether his dysfunction was born or made, the case stands as an example of the worst possible outcome of an anti-social personality disorder: senseless violence perpetrated against a random victim for self-gratification. Throughout his trial and sentencing, Kelsall showed no sign of remorse, no guilt, and gave no apology.
A textbook psychopath, he would, I believe, have gone on to kill again. In my opinion as a forensic criminology expert—and that of the police who arrested him—Kelsall was a serial killer in the making.
In the end, does the distinction between a psychopath and sociopath matter? They can both be dangerous and even deadly, the worst wreaking havoc with people’s lives. Or they can spend their life among people who are none the wiser for it.
Xanthe Mallett is a senior lecturer in forensic criminology at the University of New England. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This article has been updated to reflect the new season of "An Unexpected Killer" airing in March 2022.
The term "psychopath" usually conjures up images of some of the nation’s most depraved killers like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer (although none of them were ever given that official diagnosis).
But not all psychopaths cement their place in the public’s imagination with acts of horrific violence. Some psychopaths are hiding in plain sight and may be difficult to detect, just like the murderers featured in Season 3 of Oxygen's series "An Unexpected Killer," which premieres Friday, March 4 at 8/7c on Oxygen.
“It’s very hard to spot psychopaths because they are very good at blending in,” Bryanna Fox, an associate professor at the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida, told Oxygen.com. “We imagine them as being these snarly, evil, nasty people that like, kick puppies and are just like nasty and mean all the time, and frankly, it’s usually the opposite. They get by on their charm and their glibness and that smarminess, where they can manipulate others.”
In fact, psychopaths can find themselves in top leadership positions in corporate America or politics, and may have families of their own or become respected members of their communities.
“The tendencies of a psychopath and the characteristics of a psychopath make them very effective predators, but that doesn’t mean that they are all necessarily violent,” criminologist and author Scott Bonn told Oxygen.com.
But even with their superficial charm, psychopaths can have damaging effects on those around them, whether it's physical violence or emotional abuse.
“Psychopaths are driven for their own stimulation, their own satisfaction, their own wants and desires at the expense of anyone else,” said Bonn, author of the book “Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of The World’s Most Savage Murderers.” “They don’t mind stepping on people, they don’t mind hurting people, they don’t mind hurting their feelings, and therefore, people are expendable.”
While it's not advisable for the average person to clinically diagnose a psychopath on their own, there are red flags and warning signs that may suggest a person has a high level of psychopathy and might be a person to avoid.
According to Fox, it's estimated that about 1 percent of the population meet the criteria for psychopathy.
“Psychopathy is a constellation of personality and behavioral characteristics that basically exhibit a pervasive anti-social [tendency] and a lack of emotional and social interactive capabilities that put that person at a higher risk for behavior that is either illegal or harmful to others,” she said. “They oftentimes just lack the ability to conform their behavior to the rules, feel any consequences for their actions, or empathy and emotion for others around them.”
New York City-based family therapist Kathryn Smerling defined a psychopath as someone with “little or no conscience” and who has a lack of empathetic concern for others. People with high levels of psychopathy often also make it nearly impossible “to get along with someone without descending into some kind of chaos,” she told Oxygen.com.
Psychopaths aren’t easy to identify because many often wear a mask presenting themselves to the outside world as charming and personable.
“They can be completely sane. They can have jobs and spouses and run their finances and they blend in with society and yet it’s like this swirl of disaster around them,” Fox said. “They make terrible decisions and hurt people around them.”
To make matters more complex, psychopathy is now viewed as more of a continuum — with some individuals rating higher on the psychopathy scale than others.
To truly diagnose someone as a psychopath, experts say it takes trained professionals who often rely on established tools like The Hare Psychopathy Checklist to measure a variety of traits often associated with psychopathy. In America, to be considered a psychopath, one must earn a score of 30 or higher on the checklist which evaluates categories related to affect, anti-social behavior tendencies, lifestyle, and behavior.
The average American scores closer to a 5 on the checklist.
But Fox cautioned that even with a rating system, it's difficult to fully assess the damage someone can do or the impact it would have on their own life based on their individual score.
“The harm by psychopaths is dimensional,” she said. “You can have somebody who scores a 10, which is twice the average American, and you know, they could have twice the amount of collateral damage in their lives versus somebody who scores a 30. Obviously, it’s a lot higher, but when you just use it like, 'psychopath or not,' it makes it sound like, ‘Oh, living with this person is peaches and living with this person is a nightmare,’ and that’s not what it’s like. It’s totally on a continuum.”
Formally diagnosing someone as a psychopath should be left to the professionals, but experts recommend watching for potential red flags and warning signs.
While most adults operate from an exterior set of metrics established by agreed-upon laws, morals, and values in society, Smerling — who also serves as a clinical instructor at Mount Sinai — said psychopaths often operate from their own interior metrics that allow them to view the world however they chose or alter reality in their favor.
“It’s a general disregard for the essence and the morals of community and of sharing, of empathic concern, of reciprocity,” she said. “It’s the interior metric which is your compass.”
These individuals often have difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong and have little empathy or compassion for others.
“They never take responsibility either, that’s another thing. That’s another red flag,” Bonn said. “If you are with someone who just refuses to accept any sort of responsibility for their actions that’s a huge red flag as well.”
He pointed to notorious serial killer Dennis Rader — who went by the moniker “BTK” — as someone who still refuses to take responsibility for killing 10 innocent people and terrorizing the Wichita community for decades.
“He’s just incapable at looking at anything except his own selfish perspective and he even likens himself to a shark,” Bonn, who has corresponded with Rader while he's been behind bars, said. “He refuses to take culpability for his own actions because he says, ‘God made me this way, so why are you faulting me when I was simply born a natural-born predator?’”
A psychopath may also exhibit a grandiose sense of self and believe they are better than others around them. Those with high levels of psychopathy also typically display low levels of emotion or have inappropriate reactions to a given situation.
“One way that you can detect a psychopath is that they tend to have low affect, they just don’t react much emotionally and when they do, they seem to be very glib and superficial,” Bonn said.
Fox said those who do show emotion often exhibit anger or outbursts when they don’t get what they want.
“Everything seems to be directed towards them,” she said, adding they are “very narcissistic” in nature.
Another disturbing sign is that psychopaths often struggle with honesty and are known to be liars. Bonn said people should be concerned if they observe a pattern of chronic lying or untruthful behavior from someone in their life.
Individuals with high levels of psychopathy may also be drawn to positions of authority or positions of power.
Rader, for example, installed home alarm systems before becoming a code compliance officer in Park City. When he received his badge from the city, Bonn said one of the officers in charge of the BTK investigation offered to give him a tour of the war room.
“He said that was the greatest rush, ‘the greatest thrill of my life, because here I am receiving my badge to work through the city and they are taking me through the BTK war room and they have no idea,’” Bonn said. “It reinforced for him that he’s just the smartest guy in town.”
Fox said other traits often found in those with high levels of psychopathy include impulsivity, need for stimulation, adopting a “parasitic lifestyle” that allows them to live off others, juvenile delinquency, and other antisocial behavior.
Psychopaths can inflict emotional distress and abuse on others around them — but they aren’t all killers.
“It’s very inaccurate to say that all psychopaths are violent and that all serial killers are psychopaths, but as with many things in life there is a correlation,” Bonn said.
Fox and her colleague Matt DeLisi took an in-depth look at the link between psychopathy and homicide in a meta-analysis of 22 different studies examining a total of 2,603 homicide offenders.
They discovered that homicide offenders had a mean score on the psychopathy checklist of 21.2, signaling “moderate psychopathy.”
“The higher the psychopathy score, the more likely they were to be a homicide offender versus a regular, typical offender or just a regular citizen,” she said, adding that those who scored a 30 or above on the test were “28 times more likely” to be a homicide offender than a non-offender.
The pair found a correlation value between homicide and psychopathy of .68, which translated to a “very high correlation” between the two.
That correlation grew stronger when Fox and DeLisi looked at certain types of homicide including sexual homicide, sadistic homicide, serial killings, and multi-offender homicides.
While the percentage of psychopaths in the general population is 1 percent, Fox said that number jumps significantly to 25 percent for the prison population.
But not all these people are killers. Fox said some of people she’s interviewed who’ve scored highest on the psychopathy checklist are white collar criminals who are behind bars for stealing someone’s life savings or fraud.
Bonn also explained that many of the “poster boy serial killers” including Gacy, Bundy, Dahmer, Rader, and Green River killer Gary Ridgway, meet the definition of a psychopath but others, like Sam Berkowitz, do not.
Those that are considered psychopaths are typically more organized killers who “go to great lengths to clean up after themselves and to hide the bodies” and may appear to be “pillars of their community,” he said.
Clearly, in those situations it's a massive surprise to the people around them to learn of their crimes.
To learn more about cases where the killer was a shock, watch Season 3 of "An Unexpected Killer," which premieres Friday, March 4 at 8/7c on Oxygen.