TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

The Sociopath... or a psychopath?

Go To

GoofyLuffyMan I am actually a manatee from a Yellow Submarine (Pilot) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
I am actually a manatee
#1: Oct 18th 2024 at 4:56:51 AM

I've always had a thought. Since, The Sociopath is a trope... why can't The Psychopath be one? Sociopaths and psychopaths are very different, and there are quite a few examples of The Sociopath who actually feel closer to psychopaths, or in some cases, are actually confirmed fo be psychopaths. Heck, even the trope description has some traits that are more fitting for psychopaths, such as superficial charm. I feel like there should be two separate tropes, one for sociopaths and one for psychopaths, and they should be more accurate.

Edited by GoofyLuffyMan on Oct 18th 2024 at 4:59:35 AM

When a hero uses underhanded tactics in battle, they're "smart". But when a villain does it, they're a "coward". Is this the society we live in?
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#2: Oct 18th 2024 at 8:58:49 AM

I'm actually plotting to take The Sociopath to TRS. You can see my wick check and op in my Sandbox if you're curious. Part of the issue is that people use it for both sociopath and psychopath, so this isn't necessarily a bad idea, but would probably need to wait until my thread happens.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 18th 2024 at 12:16:29 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
StarSword Captain of USS Bajor from somewhere in deep space Since: Sep, 2011
Captain of USS Bajor
#3: Oct 18th 2024 at 9:43:01 AM

Well, to the best of my understanding, the difference between psychopathy and sociopathy, particularly in media, is kind of one of degree.

Trust me, I'm an engineer!
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#4: Oct 18th 2024 at 9:49:20 AM

We talked about this here as well, by the by, just to make it clear that my TRS didn't spawn from nothing. For context, that's my own thread on what makes a valid example of The Sociopath, because my wick check picked up a wide variety of examples.

The difference generally seems to be along the lines of sociopaths being stereotyped as emotionless and cruel, but not unstable, whereas psychopaths are generally seen as unhinged and violent. They're the psycho killers with the Slasher Smile and the bloodlust, while sociopaths are better at "hiding their nature", so to speak. So to say that it's a level of degree is somewhat accurate, but it depends on what you mean by it.

Obviously neither is a real psychological "thing", so everything I'm saying has more to do with pop-culture and general stereotyping. I don't think it'd be impossible to spin off some sort of "Stereotypical Psychopath" trope to go along with the "Stereotypical Sociopath" idea discussed in the other thread and in my OP, but we'd have to figure out exactly how to draw the lines (and if it's even worth pursuing). In practice it's not always as easy to discern what the creators are going for.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 18th 2024 at 12:54:19 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
GoofyLuffyMan I am actually a manatee from a Yellow Submarine (Pilot) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
I am actually a manatee
#5: Oct 18th 2024 at 10:00:05 AM

The odd thing is that in Real Life, it's almost kind of the opposite. I'm no expert on psychology, but I do have a little bit of knowledge. In real life, sociopaths are actually generally known as the impulsive ones, the ones who will lose their temper at the drop of a hat. Psychopaths, meanwhile, are actually known for being really good at hiding their true nature. Sociopaths often have a hard time with responsibility, and they usually can't hold a job for very long, while psychopaths tend to be very successful in life. In fact, I've heard that the most common job for psychopaths is actually being a CEO. Again, I'm no expert, but I feel like if we do make these into separate tropes, we can try to make it more accurate to real life rather than the "sociopath sneaky and psychopath crazy" stereotype.

Edited by GoofyLuffyMan on Oct 18th 2024 at 10:03:17 AM

When a hero uses underhanded tactics in battle, they're "smart". But when a villain does it, they're a "coward". Is this the society we live in?
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#6: Oct 18th 2024 at 10:08:44 AM

Again, these things don't actually exist in real life. There is no "truer to reality" version, there's only the stereotypical terms people associate with Antisocial Personality Disorder. But because of that, meanings vary. However, even our own page on Lack of Empathy describes the difference as:

"With this in mind, it is generally looked upon by most as Psychopaths being the more aggressive and dangerous version out of the two. If you're a sociopath, you're odd but not necessarily going to start stabbing puppies. The psychopath on the other hand...well, "psycho" is a derogatory term for a reason."

And yes, there's a reason the word "psycho" caught on as a word meaning "Ax-Crazy".

While other sources support your claim — I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, because looking at it your argument seems to be accurate — tropes are not defined by how the world "actually" works. They're defined by how the events play out in media, and in media, psychopathy is conflated with insanity and instability, even if the link between them doesn't make much sense when you look at how people try to define them in psychology.

Like, it's a complicated situation. If we defined it the way you're talking though, I fear it'd just be super confusing to people, especially since this is not how media defines the terms. And tropes are born from media, defined by their usage in media. Our job is to simply document how tropes manifest, not to define them based on what we think they "should" be.

In short, the focus should not be on the real life psychological terms, but on how the stereotypes manifest in storytelling. But if there's a case to be made that the media actually does "know the difference", then we can hash it out.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 18th 2024 at 1:12:18 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
GoofyLuffyMan I am actually a manatee from a Yellow Submarine (Pilot) Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
I am actually a manatee
#7: Oct 18th 2024 at 10:18:47 AM

Alright. Thanks for explaining.

When a hero uses underhanded tactics in battle, they're "smart". But when a villain does it, they're a "coward". Is this the society we live in?
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#8: Oct 18th 2024 at 10:22:13 AM

I mean, it is really weird though, since you're right that media seems to have swapped the terms around. Maybe it's because "psychopath" sounds similar to words like "psychosis" and, well, "psychology" which makes people think of crazy mind stuff. Whereas "sociopath" doesn't have such connotations and may even sound colder and smoother (at least, it does to me); people still know sociopaths are capable of great cruelty and violence, but they don't share the same connotation as being outright insane monsters.

I'm honestly not sure what a good solution here would be, since the concepts feel too closely related to fully split, and the Hollywood Psychopath idea is already sort of covered by things like Ax-Crazy. Meanwhile, I do think The Sociopath is best just left to the idea of "emotionless, cruel, and manipulative" without focusing on actions so much (mostly because it draws in examples that are just "evil bad guy is bad" even if they're not written to be a "path"), but...

To be clear, I don't want to remove the idea of impulsivity and violence from The Sociopath. That's still a part of it. But the outright instability doesn't seem to be part of the general media stereotype, unless I'm missing something.

I'll probably need to rework my OP, whatever we decide.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 18th 2024 at 1:26:29 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Reymma RJ Savoy from Edinburgh Since: Feb, 2015 Relationship Status: Wanna dance with somebody
RJ Savoy
#9: Oct 18th 2024 at 3:24:25 PM

I think it's more that "psychopath" is the older term, and was a catch-all for any kind of bad behaviour, and got associated with sadism and violence because of lurid tabloid reporting. "Sociopath" came later, and it came with some understanding that these people can be rational and mask their intentions.

And from what I've seen, while there may be a disproportionate number of sociopaths among politicians and managers, they are more likely to be stuck in dead-end jobs as janitors or such.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#10: Oct 18th 2024 at 3:30:36 PM

Yeah, the "highly successful" aspect is often another stereotype. While they certainly can thrive in such scenarios, it's not a given, but fiction would have you think they're all brilliant manipulative leaders or unhinged lunatics.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#11: Oct 19th 2024 at 3:48:25 AM

Not helping matters is that on The Other Wiki, "sociopathy" or "sociopath" just redirects to their Psychopathy article, which seems to indicate that there is little firm distinction.

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#12: Oct 19th 2024 at 7:09:45 AM

Like I said, they're not a real "thing", more loose psychological terms that describe what people now know as Antisocial Personality Disorder. The difference is up to how people use the words, nothing tangible. That's why it's hard to pin down an exact definition, given that the way people use the terms can differ and media takes a whole different approach.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 19th 2024 at 10:42:59 AM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#13: Oct 19th 2024 at 10:00:09 AM

yeah, if I had to guess, at one point, everyone used psychopath to refer to the collection of behavioral and personality traits now under Antisocial Personality Disorder, which was stereotyped/caricaturized as being insane, erratic, and violent. then people learned that some people are very good at masking this behavior such that they aren't perpetually Ax-Crazy. The public caricaturized that into stoic Manipulative Bastard but didn't update the previous stereotype, just used "sociopath" to describe this new stereotype. And even though psychology has more or less decided that these aren't two distinct psychological/behavioral disorders, but different presentations of the same one, the caricatures have been so well used as to take on a life of their own independent of actual facts and science. Ideas/language evolving while public consciousness doesn't is honestly a pretty common origin of tropes.

CompletelyNormalGuy Am I a weirdo? from a place where folks put cream cheese on hot dogs (Oldest One in the Book)
Am I a weirdo?
#14: Oct 19th 2024 at 12:15:45 PM

In psychology, the only difference between the terms is how outdated they are. Psychopath is the very outdated term, sociopath is the slightly less outdated term.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#15: Oct 19th 2024 at 12:43:15 PM

Yeah, that's why it's tricky to pin down a clear definition for the trope, since there isn't actually a consistent real life definition to pull from. All we can do is look at fictional usages and try to find the patterns, which is obviously how tropes work anyway, but...

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
commentspaee Since: May, 2023
#16: Oct 20th 2024 at 9:56:00 AM

You can use the term to refer to both. Though... if someone's just straight up psychotic then we don't have one that isn't The Sociopath. Junko Enoshima is... an example that comes to mind for that. Tomura Shigaraki too. They both have no empathy and want to destroy things indiscriminately (though Tomura has a reason for it and is a Create Your Own Villain example while Junko is just a monster) but are they conscious about it? No, they're just sporadic and don't really care enough to plan things out. They just go for the nearest target and take them down. ...Then we compare it to a villain like, say, ALL FOR ONE AND DIO and yeah, suddenly we have two who are clearly and obviously doing terrible things knowing they're terrible but don't care and are using careful, coordinated manipulations to do the job with an end goal in mind.

Edited by commentspaee on Oct 20th 2024 at 5:56:42 PM

Admiralakbar1 Admiral Ackbar from none of your business Since: Dec, 2013
Admiral Ackbar
#17: Oct 23rd 2024 at 8:50:42 AM

Easiest way IMO would be to split it into two tropes (or two categories within the same trope) with the following labels:

  • Hollywood Sociopathy is when lack of empathy makes someone cold and calculating. They're usually manipulative, Faux Affably Evil, and narcissistic, but they're also pragmatic, rationalist, and occasionally correct because they're not swayed by pesky emotions and ethics when making decisions. Their cruelty is only done to serve a purpose—generally evil or self-centered, but a purpose nonetheless. (Professor Moriarty, Frank Underwood)

  • Hollywood Psychopathy is when lack of empathy makes someone Axe-Crazy. Sometimes their violent impulses are caused by other conditions, but it's usually just because they don't think human life has inherent value and see others as worthless playthings. Expect them to also have a god complex, childish tendencies, sadist kinks, and other traits that make them outright enjoy inflicting suffering upon others. Their cruelty is petty, capricious, and often disadvantageous. (Joffrey, Patrick Bateman)

An analysis page would be a good place to discuss the actual nature of Antisocial Personality Disorder and how it's different from the pop culture perceptions of sociopathy.

Edited by Admiralakbar1 on Oct 23rd 2024 at 11:52:50 AM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#18: Oct 23rd 2024 at 9:04:44 AM

Yeah. That was the idea I went with for my TRS opener, though I have been wanting to update it.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
StarSword Captain of USS Bajor from somewhere in deep space Since: Sep, 2011
Captain of USS Bajor
#19: Oct 23rd 2024 at 9:41:38 AM

[up][up]That looks like a very good draft for a split. [tup]

Trust me, I'm an engineer!
amathieu13 Since: Aug, 2013
#20: Oct 23rd 2024 at 12:38:21 PM

[up][up][up]my only issue with this (well two, I really don't like the Hollywood X snowclones tbh) is that I genuinely don't really see psychopathy as it manifests in media as distinct from Ax-Crazy. This goes back to what I said in the other thread, i.e. there's a difference between the words used as adjectives and the archetypes that have become associated with the words and for psychopath, the defining trait is Ax-Crazy. The opening paragraph for Ax-Crazy reads:

An "ax-crazy" character is someone who is psychologically unstable and presents a clear and present danger to others. They are capable of extreme violence, whether carried out with a Slasher Smile, insane laughter, speaking in a Creepy Monotone and/or Word-Salad Horror, or out and out murderous rage; and with no way of knowing just what will set them off, this makes them extremely frightening to deal with.

And that's basically how I would describe a stereotypical psychopath. So while I think clarifying The Sociopath is needed, I don't think we need a different trope for psychopath.

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#21: Oct 23rd 2024 at 1:02:45 PM

I'm planning to update my TRS OP soon to address the points brought up here.

Still concerned that we don't have a solid way to differentiate between "generic evil jerkass" and "intentionally written sociopath" though. Hopefully that'll just come with the retool...

Edit: Done, thoughts?

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 23rd 2024 at 4:41:16 AM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Admiralakbar1 Admiral Ackbar from none of your business Since: Dec, 2013
Admiral Ackbar
#23: Oct 25th 2024 at 10:10:49 AM

[up][up]Agreed with the point on intentional examples. The best way to avoid Stereotypical Psychopath from becoming "Axe-Crazy but more specific" would be to specify that their lack of empathy must be explicitly highlighted and tied to their propensity for violence. For instance, Homelander or Patrick Bateman would qualify, but not Ramsay Bolton or Caligula.

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#24: Oct 25th 2024 at 10:13:36 AM

It could work in theory, though it seems trickier to pull off; with the stereotypical sociopath, you have them being charming, manipulative, and calm, while also being impulsive and cruel and selfish. I feel like it has more going for it to help you identify what specifically they're going for, but the difference between someone who's just Ax-Crazy and an actual, intentional psychopath can be harder to pin down, but granted I'm not super familiar with Bateman and Homelander so I'm not sure how obvious the Lack of Empathy is.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 25th 2024 at 1:24:09 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Add Post

Total posts: 24
Top