Stop Confusing Narcissism with Sociopathy (Here’s Why)

Is your romantic partner a narcissist? Is your boss a sociopath? Or could it be they’re both just a bit of a jerk? The distinction really matters. It can help you figure out how to interact with them most helpfully, and whether and to what extent you want to keep this person in your life. So, let’s dive into it. We’re going to look at the similarities and differences between people who are narcissists, that is people with narcissistic personality disorder,

People that are sociopaths with antisocial personality disorder, and people who are just a bit of a jerk. I’ll also tell you about some of my experiences with all three types of people. Let’s start by talking about what they have in common. Now, it’s important to note that all three of these things are substantially correlated to each other. In our data, scores on antisocial personality disorder have about a point4 to point6 correlation with scores on narcissistic personality disorder. And both of them

Are correlated with being a jerk. That’s pretty high. So, having one of these conditions makes you more likely to have the others, even though most people who are sociopaths are not narcissists, and most people who are narcissists are not sociopaths. The first similarity is that all three types of people are more likely to say things that are rude or impolite. But that doesn’t mean that they’re motivated by the same reasons. Narcissists, for example, are more likely to do rude behaviors that relate

To putting themselves above other people. For example, by putting other people down or bragging when it’s inappropriate. Sociopaths, on the other hand, are more likely to engage in rude behavior either because they don’t understand the nuances of what’s appropriate in that social situation or because they’re actually indifferent towards how you feel about what they say. Jerks, on the other hand, are quite a bit different. They tend to be low in the personality trait known as agreeableness. They simply care less

About social nicities and care less about offending other people. So, they’re more likely to say things that are rude and not really mind that other people are bothered by them. This connects to our next similarity, which is that all three conditions tend to be marked by less apparent empathy. It’s well known that narcissists tend to have lower average empathy than other people. In my experience, this tends to be connected to their self-centeredness. I’ve seen incredibly narcissistic people

Express tons of seemingly genuine empathy, but that empathy immediately dries up if suddenly their interests are pitted against someone else’s. So, I believe they usually do have the ability to have empathy, but that empathy may only extend up until the point where their own self-interest is at stake. Sociopaths, though, tend to be different. They’re more likely to completely lack emotional empathy. In other words, to have no ability to empathize with others. In my interview with a sociopath on the Clear Thinking

Podcast, I asked her, “What would your experience be like if you were watching someone being tortured?” She said she’d have an aesthetic reaction to it. She might feel disgusted. But I pressed her and I said, “But would you have empathy for that person?” And she said, “No.” And in fact, she said she doubts that empathy even exists at all because she’s never experienced it. But what about jerks? I think that most jerks would feel empathy. If they saw you suffering,

They’d feel bad about that. On the other hand, they may be less likely to have empathy if you’re offended by what they say. They might think, “Well, I’m just going to say what I want to say, and if you’re offended, that’s your problem.” The third similarity you might notice between these groups is short-teeredness or proness to sudden anger. The reason they tend to get angry, though, might be pretty different. Narcissists tend to blow up in sudden anger when their ego

Is threatened. When someone deeply criticizes them or makes them feel inferior, since they’re very focused on protecting their ego, they’re very sensitive to slight to it. For instance, in my interview with a narcissist on the Clear Thinking podcast, I asked him about sensitivity to criticism. He mentioned a time when someone was trying to give him advice about TikTok. It triggered sudden anger in him because he felt like it was the other person putting themselves above him.

That’s one of the biggest issues with having this disorder is that how unbridled I can become uh because I’m so hyper sensitive to this criticism or perceives criticism more accurately and I will fly off the handle because you try to give me advice. All I can hear is you’re stupid. you should be doing it this way, like like you’re so dumb. I’m better than you. I can tell you how to do this better. >> What about sociopaths, though? They tend

To care way less about what other people think about them. And while they often have muted emotions in other ways, anger is often the exception. The sociopaths that I’ve talked to about this tell me they tend to get very angry very quickly if other people unjustly try to shame or control them. One sociopath told me about a time that she went into a rage because someone scolded her about using an escalator that was out of order. Now,

While many people might be annoyed by this, she actually followed him with the intent to hurt him. Thankfully though, he got away. Jerks, on the other hand, they might be more likely to be koginly or curt or irritable, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to fly into a rage and follow you or that they feel like they have to protect their ego at all costs. We’ve talked about similarities between these categories. Let’s now talk about what makes them different from

Each other. Unlike the other groups, narcissists tend to be extremely driven by attention and admiration. So much so that it’s often one of their primary drives in life to get these things. When they’re around other people, they often want to make themselves the center of attention. And they want other people to feel that they’re superior. Some of them even describe getting a high from when their ego inflates. It makes them feel incredibly good. On the other hand, when

Their ego deflates, it makes them feel incredibly bad. People often mistake narcissism for confidence. Yes, narcissists can seem really confident. They can seem arrogant. They can seem like they think they’re superior. But it’s a kind of fickle confidence because it can suddenly collapse. A person who’s truly confident doesn’t need your admiration and attention. A funny story I have about this is one time a narcissist I know paid a ton of money to get an award. And then he threw himself

An event to celebrate the award that he was getting. This put him in the center of attention and caused people to admire him because they didn’t realize that he’d paid for the award. Narcissists really will go the extra mile to get attention and admiration, even doing things that most people would never be willing to do. So, we’ve talked about narcissists, but what makes sociopaths different from these other groups? The first thing is that sociopaths tend to

Be very transactional in relationships. They get something from you, you get something from them. Whereas most close friends in your life might do something nice because they care about you. They want you to feel good. They want to deepen your relationship, sociopaths are more likely to do it because they want to achieve specific outcomes. They’ll typically be nice to you if they think it benefits them to be nice to you. They’ll typically be mean to you if they

Think it benefits them to be mean to you. Another distinct aspect of sociopathy is they tend to have an unusual relationship to fear. It’s not exactly that they can’t experience fear, but it doesn’t seem to prevent them from doing things in the same way it does other people. For instance, one time I was talking to a sociopath and asking him if he feels fear. He said, “Well, what do you mean by fear?” And I said, “Well, suppose there was a deadly snake

Right there on the floor in front of us.” and he said, “Oh, we used to have deadly snakes in my old job. They’d sometimes sneak into the building and they’d send me to go kill them.” This also can connect to impulsiveness among people with antisocial personality disorder. They can seem to act without thinking about the consequences. And I think this is probably connected to this unusual relationship with fear. If you’re not really afraid of the consequences, then yeah, you’re not

Really going to consider them as much. There’s some interesting research that I hope some people attempt to replicate about anticipatory anxiety among sociopaths. The idea is that if they know something bad is going to happen, like an electric shock, they have less stress response. Their heart rate doesn’t go up as much and they may have less of a galvanic skin response before that shock occurs. We’ve talked about narcissists. We’ve talked about sociopaths. What makes jerks different

Than both of those? Jerks tend to be lower in agreeableness, higher in irritability, and generally less interested in following social norms and conventions. But their personality variation tends to be within a more typical range. They may be a bit lower here and higher here, but not in a range we typically consider pathological. You may really dislike being around them, but other people might enjoy being around them or maybe even will appreciate some of their traits, like

Their extreme directness about what they think. But is it even fair to talk about categories of people? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, the DSM5, which is the standard system for diagnosing mental disorders in the US, does use categories. People also find it easy to use categories. It matches the way the human mind typically thinks. Most importantly though, people in these extreme categories tend to have quite a lot in common. Every sociopath is different from every other one. But

Knowing someone is in the category of antisocial personality disorder does tell you a lot of important information that’s likely true about them. Similarly, every narcissist is different from every other narcissist. But knowing that someone is in the category of narcissistic personality disorder again tells you a lot of information that’s likely true of them. That being said, the scientific evidence suggests that factor models rather than categories tend to produce the most accurate predictions. They allow us to model

People who don’t fit naturally into the category who might have some traits of a sociopath but not others. For example, there’s even a newer model called hightop which tries to model all the different factors related to mental health rather than putting people into buckets. We made this handy ven diagram to help you at a quick glance better see the differences between narcissists and sociopaths. You can see in the red region in the middle, this shows what

The conditions tend to have in common, such as self-centeredness, manipuliveness, and lower empathy. On the left, we show traits that are more characteristic of narcissists than sociopaths, such as need for attention, need for admiration, and comparison of self to others. On the right, we show traits that are more characteristic of sociopaths that of narcissists, such as transactionality in relationships, lack of guilt or shame, and indifference to the suffering of others. If you want to go much deeper on this topic, I

Recommend you check out my interview with a sociopath or my interview with the narcissist on the Clear Thinking podcast. We’ll put links to both in the description below. You can also understand the ven diagram better by checking out our recent article which is about what everyone should know about sociopaths. If you found this interesting, I’d really appreciate it if you subscribe to our channel and check out our other videos. We have so much more content about the way the human

Mind works.