Example cleanup: The Sociopath

Ok cheking the article of The Sociopath first let me tell you, it's very good, real kudos to whoever is/are the author/authors, it's really a very complete article with very accurate description of the subjetc in clinical and medical terms (this troper is a psychologist, BTW).

Problem is, after checking some of the sub-articles? as I was afraid many of the examples are really no the case, in the film sections it's not that bad (I was amazed that some horror characters like Michael Myers, Jason Voorheist and Leatherface are not included, which is good as they're not sociopaths really) and I did not review videogames or anime as I dont know much about those topics, BUT:

In Television some of the character listed are, for example, in Buffy The Vampire Slayer; Angel (a vampire), Glory (a Hell Demon) and Adam (a Frankenstein-like demon human hybrid monster). No kidding, that's like including as sociopath the shark from Jaws. I mean, a sociopath should not be a creature whose sole nature is to be evil. Then include The Devil in the list for that matter (wait, he IS included). A similar case should be apply for the Supernatural examples. Again, I think (I might be wrong) the trope about sociopaths refers to people or at least entities whose normal way of be it's not to be pure evil, or am I wrong?

Similarly in the case of western animation, some of the examples are basically bad guys or characters that fans dislike and that acted bad in ONE episode not to show any sociopathic behavior in any other instance.

I would love to clean a little both articles but I really dont want to be intrusive or vandalic nor entering a big edition war.

PD: if I misspelled some words or have grammar problems please ignore it, English it's not my first language.

You know, before any example cleanup starts, we should probably look at how the trope is defined.

Namely, do characters have to fit all of the criteria in the list? That is, can there be Subverted Trope examples?

The first one is quite obviously a mandatory trait, because it's at the crux of the sociopathy condition, but what about the others? I especially note Trait #4: "A Grandiose Sense of Self-Worth"; I've never pegged excessive self-esteem as a symptom of sociopathy.

If the answer to the previous question is "Yes, all of them", then in general terms, how strongly does a character have to be in each trait to qualify as The Sociopath?

All sociopaths fit a Grandiose Sense of Self because they are honestly that arrogant and believe themselves to be superior to the entirety of the human species, essentially. Also, when people think of excessive pride and/or self esteem, they also tend to think of boisterous braggarts that like to toot their own horn about how great they are and are always shoving their ego down everyone else's throats.

A sociopath is a whole different beast. They'll essentially pretend to be good neighbors, always polite and kind to you in order to keep up appearances, while in reality they think of you as a particularly interesting bug that they have to play nice with to prevent unnecessary questions or have an available character witness to talk about how good people they are, IF you are lucky. There extreme arrogance is always there, just hidden beneath the sociable veneer, at least if they are high functioning.

Sorry for the delay in response, I thought the topic was closed, until now I discover it was just re-located

Well, yes I guess that the character should follow all the criteria to be considered a socipath, is generally how it's handle clinically, of course TV Tropes is not an academic page, but IMHO does a very good work keeping the examples as clean as possible.

So any objection or feedback on the issue of cleaning up a little the page?

PD: Oh, and about how strongly has the character to be in each trait, well is a good question. Clinically speaking is generally more important the lack of empathy part that the narcisism, but opinions among experts may vary.

edited 15th Dec '16 5:03:33 AM by Luppercus

Well I see no objections to the clean-up, so I'll start. I do want to make clear some of the criteria to use on my behalf:

• The character should have at least four of the five indicators (we can be indulgents on that one, is not an exact science)
• The character should show an continuous sociopathic behavior, not just be limited to one episode example.
• The characters should not belong to a race that are in-universe show to be normally sociopathic, for obvious reasons.

Any other observation Im all ears. Now notice that I know near to nothing about games and very little about Manga other than the most mainstream examples, I do (modesty a side) knwo quite a lot about film, literature, television, animation and to a lesser extend comics, so I'll do my best on those sections, I can clean the sections I dont really know much, just in case.

As the factors are currently described on the page, I can go with "must have #1 (Lack of Empathy) and regularly display at least three of the other four."

That's because while the "grandiose sense of self-worth" is part of a clinical diagnosis, the way our page describes it isn't always the way it manifests. They don't necessarily believe that there;s nothing they can't do well; they believe that they are the most important person, so if there's something someone else does well, that person should as a matter of course, do the thing for them if they want. If we change that paragraph to more along those lines, I'd say "all five must be present"

The major problems I've seen with this trope getting shoehorned is that people just skip over its complex psychological criteria and just equate it to Lack of Empathy rather than a character who fits the definition of anti-social personality disorder. And that's when they're not using "sociopath" as a by-word for Sadist, which should be a largely unrelated concept. Certainly a person who has to fake empathy can have a higher than average propensity for violence, but someone who's violent is not automatically a sociopath. Don't get me started on Sociopathic Hero, which is an even worse mess than The Sociopath.

edited 16th Dec '16 9:48:13 AM by Morgenthaler

And I suspect a lot of people aren't aware that Lack of Empathy doesn't have to be an inherent trait^note That is, a character may very well have the capacity to empathize with people and does exhibit such a trait, but also exhibits the ability to "shut off" said capacity (whether in general or towards specific targets) in order to better perform immoral acts (e.g. cold-blooded murder/torture). In fact, isn't that pretty much how many forms of discrimination work IRL — e.g. a racist displays empathy normally to those of his own race, but seems completely incapable of empathizing with those of the race(s) that he discriminates against?, whereas it pretty much has to be for The Sociopath.

Exactly, all of you are right in your observations.

The Lack of Empathy already overlaps with the trope. The trope is pretty subjective to begin with, and people use to put 1- All the bad guys of movies (like every Disney villain) or 2- Charecters that they dislike like Leonard mother in The Big Bang Theory or some bully in Glee (I guess, I never watched Glee).

In the discussion a user made an excellent suggestion; turning the trope into a Useful Notes for the clinical definition (I guess without examples) and creating something like Hollywood Sociopath that can use more broad examples.

edited 16th Dec '16 2:57:49 PM by Luppercus

Alright, I did the most I can, I think the clean up improved a little the pages. I know near to nothing of anime and videogames so Im afraid some other troper would have to clean those, if someone wishes.

If help is needed to make a clean up in Sociopathic Hero let me know, I'll gladly would help.

edited 19th Dec '16 7:25:43 AM by Luppercus

Reggie from Free Birds is on the animated films section.

Can you be more specific? which one of all the rules is in violation exactly?

Why are child/teenage characters listed as examples of The Sociopath? The trope mostly seems to abide by the real life traits of sociopaths, and as said on the Analysis page, one of those is that no one is diagnosed with it until age 18, and people younger than that who show traits of sociopathy are diagnosed with Conduct Disorder instead. Should "Must be 18 years or older" be added as a required quality on the trope page?

That (the age limit) is for the medical diagnosis, which is not the same thing as the trope.