Talk:sociopath

psychopath/sociopath
copied from discussion at the information desk

What's the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath? Is there a difference? RJFJR 21:30, 1 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Sociopaths have anti-social traits. Psychopaths have anti-social traits with marked aggressiveness. —Stephen (Talk) 12:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Both have an inclination to commit crimes, but to put it in simpler terms - a sociopath commits crimes, but generally stays within the framework of the criminal world, whereas a psychopath has no rules, be it in the normal society or in the criminal world, so consequently they tend to be shunned by other criminals for their unpredictable behaviours. Jamesjiao → T ◊ C 21:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Ten years later... I would like to add this here, in case someone tries to 'correct' the Dutch translation.

The weird situation is that of course we have sociopaat#Dutch, but the English word is often translated as psychopaat simply because we don't really use sociopaat/sociopathie in general language. The Dutch meanings of these concepts seem to be a bit less distinct from each other compared to English? I just looked it up and the most authoritative dictionary for Dutch, Van Dale, also translates sociopath as psychopaat... 2001:1C02:1990:A900:B931:5495:ECE8:4B5C 16:09, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

RFC discussion: February–December 2021
The definition provided for sociopath implies that people who act sociopathically usually do so because of environmental influences. This seems questionable based on the current state of our knowledge. On the other hand, it may have been intended to mean that people assume this when they use the term, which again is questionable. This could be clarified in the definition, e.g., “, especially when this is attributed to environment.”

Also, is this word defined by the APA in its DSM?

If this term is not accepted by the APA, this might be important in some contexts, if it is accepted, that may also be important, since they control meaning of these terms in scientific contexts.
 * Reporting the latest "scientific" or clinical causal hypotheses is not a good function for a dictionary. We could have professional and popular definitions, though. There is probably more scope for folk beliefs about causality, because they have been so durable. DCDuring (talk) 14:24, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

RFC-resolved in. --Fytcha (talk) 18:29, 13 December 2021 (UTC)