Define, compare, and summarize antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, and sociopathy. Be sure to consider the perspectives of the criminologist and psychologist.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer will include elements of the following: Antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, and sociopathy are terms describing the same constellation of traits or separate concepts with fuzzy boundaries. We use the generic term psychopathy, a syndrome we can define psychologically as being characterized by egocentricity; deceitfulness; manipulativeness; selfishness; and a lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse, or physiologically as a syndrome characterized by the inability to tie the social emotions with cognition. Some researchers believe that there is a subset of psychopaths (so-called primary psychopaths) whose behavior is biological in origin and a more numerous group (secondary psychopaths) whose behavior is the result of genetics and adverse environments (Walsh & Wu, 2008). Other researchers view psychopathy not as something one is or isn’t, but rather as a name we have applied to the most serious and chronic criminal offenders. Psychiatrists apply the label antisocial personality disorder (APD) to such criminals. APD is defined by the American Psychiatric Association (1994) as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood”. The criteria for diagnosing APD are both clinical and legal, but they rest primarily on behavior. Criminologists, however, generally want to define individuals according to criteria that are independent of their behavior and then determine in what ways those so defined differ from individuals not so defined.