How to Tell the Difference Between a Psychopath and a Narcissist

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel oh this is dr. grande today's question is how can one tell the difference between a psychopath and a narcissist so this is kind of a complex question because these constructs are complex so I'm going to start by defining both of the terms so we use the term psychopath we're talking about some of us trait psychopathy and when we use the term narcissist we're talking about someone who has trait narcissism neither one of these constructs is automatically indicative of pathology so what I mean by that is if somebody has psychopathy that doesn't mean they have a mental disorder if somebody has narcissism that doesn't mean to have a mental disorder mental disorders are classifications we see in places like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual the DSM but they don't necessarily relate to traits like certain traits that cluster together that we would call psychopathy or we would call narcissism so psychopathy has two main parts to it two main types and narcissism does as well so with psychopathy we see there's both primary and secondary psychopathy sometimes these are called factor 1 and factor 2 psychopathy now it makes this more confusing that sometimes factor 1 psychopathy is called psychopathy and factor 2 psychopathy is called sociopathy so that's where we get the words Psychopaths and sociopaths a psychopath would be someone who has factor 1 psychopathy and a sociopath would be someone has factor 2 psychopathy now sometimes we hear these terms we think of the mental disorder antisocial personality sorter again this is a separate construct but of the two sociopathy factor to psychopathy has a much stronger relationship with antisocial personality than does factor 1 psychopathy or primary psychopathy so here when I talk about someone who's a psychopath I'm mostly talking about of course factor 1 psychopathy primary psychopathy we talk about narcissism again as I mentioned there's two constructs here two types of narcissism we have grandiose and we have vulnerable now grandiose narcissism lines up fairly well with the mental disorder narcissistic personality but again that doesn't mean they're the same thing and here I'll really be mostly referring to grandiose narcissism and a little bit too vulnerable narcissism so real quickly here I'll go through some of the traits we see with all four of these constructs and I'll start getting into some of the areas of overlap and how we can tell the two apart the two main constructs apart so I'll start with psychopathy and then move to narcissism so with primary psychopathy and again this is what I'm mostly talking about here when I talk about the word psychopathy we see characteristics like being callous unemotional pathological lying being manipulative and being bold we call this fearless dominance with factor to psychopathy we see characteristics like being irresponsible being impulsive having a need for stimulation and being involved in activities that could result in arrest moving over to narcissism we talked about Randy's narcissism we see a grandiose sense of self-importance we see someone who has a lot of fantasies of success in power that tend to be jealous have a sense of entitlement be arrogant and try to manipulate people with vulnerable narcissism we see some of the same characteristics but it's really a different expression of narcissism it tends to be an expression that involves more insecurity hyper sensitivity to criticism shame guilt and sadness so moving back to this comparison between the psychopath and the narcissist it's important to recognize that there's a lot of overlap between these constructs there's actually quite a bit of overlap and many people who have traits from psychopathy would have traits from narcissism and the opposite is true as well so it makes distinguishing these two sets of traits very difficult with all the overlap and all the co-occurrence this is when the traits appear at the same time the same person it just gets very tough to decide wish them so in order to distinguish them I'm gonna look at this in terms of three ways I'm gonna talk about features of narcissism that I would not expect to see normally in psychopathy and then features of psychopathy I wouldn't expect to see normally and narcissism and then I'm going to talk about features that appear in both and of course there's a lot of features here there are a lot of features that appear in both but how they can sometimes manifest differently and this is where it gets really challenging but also I think this is the best way to tell them apart is to really look at the areas of similarity and see how those areas manifest differently if you just look at traits that you wouldn't expect to see in the other that's a little bit simplistic and doesn't give you a good idea clinically of how to distinguish these different traits so first I'll start with the features of narcissism that I wouldn't expect to see with psychopathy again keep in mind there's a lot of overlap and it's not unusual to see the same traits in both psychopaths and narcissists so the first trait I wouldn't expect to see in psychopathy that we see with narcissism would be envy Envy is one of those characteristics that's much more strongly associated with narcissism because it has an emotional component and with psychopathy we don't see much of an emotional component jealousy is really a feeling the next one is a need for admiration I think this is a fairly good way to distinguish the two somebody with narcissism has this need for excessive admiration and some of the psychopathy that's really not as important to them we don't see a lot of emphasis on again relational emotional and affective aspects so aspects dealing with feelings with narcissism we see someone believes that they're special or unique we see some of this in psychopathy but again it's not as pronounced we also see with narcissism an expectation of loyalty from other people and believing other people should do them special favors we call this a sense of entitlement we see this a little bit with psychopathy but again much more pronounced in narcissism the next characteristic is arrogance this is much stronger in narcissism that isn't a psychopathy and I think one of the reasons that this is an area that's viewed as overlapping a lot is because some of the callous unemotional attitudes we see with psychopathy can appear arrogant but with narcissism we have arrogance really in a truer sense of the word we see someone who's condescending pretentious haughty and supercilious and we don't really necessarily see that with psychopathy now the last area that we see with narcissism and probably would not see with psychopathy is actually from vulnerable narcissism and this is that hyper sensitivity to criticism element I talked about before individuals who have vulnerable narcissism or covert narcissism as opposed to grandiose or overt tend to be hypersensitive they tend not to like criticism somebody who's psychopathic doesn't usually worry too much about criticism that's not a factor that really hits them hard typically again it's relational and emotional and that's not an area where they're really paying a lot of attention normally now I'm talking about the features of psychopathy that I wouldn't expect to see in narcissism the first one would be not being sensitive to punishment individuals who are psychopathic are not sensitive to punishment that doesn't mean that punishment will deter them from some criminal acts or some bad acts but in general we view that they're very resistant to worrying about punishment so that is a trait that more or less facilitates criminal activity and what narcissism we see that people are aware of punishment and generally want to avoid punishment the next feature of psychopathy would be low neuroticism or low negative emotions so not being depressed and not being anxious and not having other negative emotions this is somebody who also doesn't panic very easily low neuroticism now with narcissism we don't see that we usually see mid-range neuroticism and even high neuroticism so this is an area that distinguishes the two I think fairly reliably the next area here is being unemotional this includes unemotional decision-making we see this with psychopathy we don't really see this with narcissism sometimes people look at a narcissist and say that they're unemotional but emotions are part of the narcissistic personality profile they're not really part of psychopathy another area is lack of guilt we tend to see this with psychopathy not as much with narcissism and again I think this gets confused with lack of empathy so people will say well a narcissist they don't have guilt because they lack empathy guilt is a different construct so we do actually see a fair amount of guilt with narcissism again very little with psychopathy and the last area here that I'd expect to see what psychopathy but not with narcissism would be this ability to be cold and calculating now again there's overlap so we do see this characteristic with both traits but it's much stronger with psychopathy especially when we consider psychopaths who commit serious criminal acts they're really quite cold and calculating and can harm people without really having much of an emotional response I would not normally expect to see that with just trait narcissism so that brings me to the last area to distinguish Psychopaths from narcissists and that would be features that appear in both but manifests differently so if we look at some of the overlap areas I'm going to go through and talk about them and just how they might appear a little bit differently from one trait to the other and sometimes the differences are really quite subtle now the first one is grandiosity we see grandiosity in both psychopathy and narcissism but really it's a combination of factors it's the first symptom criterion in narcissistic personality sorter but I view it as really a composite of other symptom criteria so Randy ah City can be a bit murky but I generally think we see more grandiosity with narcissism and more facets of grandiosity more of an expression of entitlement and envy and requiring excessive admiration which I all think kind of feed into that grandiosity that's in my opinion more pronounced with narcissism now the next area is fantasies of success wealth power so some people say well this is really something that's unique to narcissism and it doesn't really have a large role in psychopathy but I disagree I think that actually fantasies of power and success are something we see with both psychopaths and narcissists so to illustrate this difference this difference in how fantasies are expressed I'm going to use an example based on an old movie so his ol movie that came out in 1980 called airplane and the title is airplane with an exclamation mark so you don't see many titles of movies that have exclamation marks now I thought it was a pretty funny movie arguably one of the most humorous movies certainly at the time and the basic plot of the movie was that there was this airliner and the pilots became incapacitated and one of the passengers had to attempt to land the plane so consider this as the start of a fantasy so you have somebody who's psychopathic and somebody's narcissistic and you've given that set up the set up from the movie airplane and you say look the pilots have become incapacitated and you're called upon now to attempt to land the plane and they have a fantasy that each have a fantasy about how this would turn out now they wouldn't necessarily tell you that fantasy but let's pretend that you would know what it is that you could somehow read their minds and you could note what the fantasy was and how it played out so with narcissism I think the fantasy would be fairly pro-social I think in the narcissistic fantasy the passenger the narcissist would go into the cockpit they would take control the plane very confidently they would communicate in kind of a condescending way with the tower suggesting that there's more difficulties with the airplane and the towers recognizing and it's more of a challenge than the tower is really saying it is kind of setting up an antagonistic relationship with the people in the tower and again noticing or pretending that the plane is also damaged in some way so not just that they have to land the plane which will be are enough but there's this extra hurdle that they're really doing something incredibly extraordinary instead of just extraordinary and I think most of the time their fantasy would conclude with them successfully landing the plane under tough conditions under conditions where they had to do something different than what they were instructed to do which makes them kind of more of a hero because they recognized something that again the people in the tower couldn't see and they saved the lives of all the passengers and of course the pilots get medical attention and they're okay so I think with narcissism the outcome would be the fantasy would be again very pro-social and everybody was fine it was a good outcome and they overcame something really amazing to have the outcome and the reason that I think this fantasy is more consistent with narcissism is because it really feeds into the narcissistic mentality they're gonna get a lot of admiration they're gonna be thought of as special or unique they're probably going to be able to feed that sense of entitlement because people will want to interview them people want to pay them to endorse products all kinds of good things would probably happen to somebody who could be so heroic now what about the Psychopaths what about somebody who has psychopathic tendencies well I think there's a few different directions that this scenario could go I think one scenario could be and again this is a fantasy so it's going to break from reality quite a bit I think one fantasy could be that the psychopath takes all the money and all the jewelry from the passengers and exits the plane the plane crashes so they get all the money and there's really no witnesses of what happened now again I know it's not really feasible to jump out of a commercial jetliner but I think that would be something that could be part of a psychopathic fantasy I think another fantasy though could be that they go into the cockpit and they take control of the plane they don't have any other problems they invent they're very calculating they move through all the steps they land the plane successfully and they're thinking the whole time about how they're gonna be rewarded how they're going to get money not so much fame but money and maybe even people having some to a romantic interest in them so again really focused on pleasure so we look at something like this kind of a silly example from the movie I think we see a different expression of narcissism and psychopathy in that fantasy symptom or sign so moving down the list to the next area of overlap this would be manipulation and I think this is an area where people would say it's almost identical the manipulation is the same from narcissism to psychopathy and I would disagree I think if we look at the manipulation for narcissism this is much more emotionally based like trying to make somebody feel sorry for them it has an interpersonal component to it as we see in the symptom criterion for narcissistic personality I think with psychopathy it's much simpler it's to gain something again material so just like the fantasy the end of it here for psychopathy would be what type of material gain or pleasure could they obtain from manipulation so we think of a manipulation with narcissism being again about feelings and getting people to feel a certain way and with psychopathy getting something material the next area would be a lack of empathy and this is one area where I do think the expressions of lack of empathy or callousness are very similar from a narcissist over to a psychopath I don't really see many major differences there are some subtle differences but essentially I view these as similar both narcissists and Psychopaths have a capacity for empathy but both don't use it because they rank empathy as not important they rank other people's feelings as not important so again mostly the same the same thing I'd say for superficial charm the expressions are similar from narcissists to Psychopaths now how about dominus fearless dominus or social dominance well I think this is really the key difference I think for narcissism it is social dominance it's coming into a situation like a meeting at a workplace and trying to take charge not physically not really trying to harm anybody but with Psychopaths it would be more of a fearless dominance it would include potentially a willingness to be involved in a physical confrontation so if someone's purely narcissistic and they try to be dominant and they're confronted in many cases they would back down not always because again there's a lot of overlap between narcissism psychopathy but in many cases that general tendency would be to back down they're only looking to be socially dominant if the same challenge was made to somebody who is primarily psychopathic a lot of times they would engage they would engage in aggression so the fearless dominance there isn't really hiding some other emotion they really are willing to follow through an attempt to be dominant now the last area I'll cover here features that appear in both but manifests differently will be pathological lying and I think this really follows the same theme that I've used for all these other characteristics but narcissism the point of the pathological lying is to inflate someone's ego the lies are unnecessary in terms of material gain so somebody's saying how they know a bunch of famous people how they use to be famous or they are famous how they're destined for greatness all of which of course could be lies or oftentimes would be lies and they're really again unnecessary lies they don't seem to achieve anything in the material world but they're really done so that somebody can inflate their ego or self esteem so they can feel better about themselves again what narcissists we think they're trying to protect a fragile sense of self and pathological lying can help do that but psychopathy there is no fragile sense of self at least that's not how we usually conceptualize it so the lying is for a clear material purpose it's to get something they desire they want they need or some type of pleasure like material gain or as I mentioned like romantic interest or attraction so it's really I think very easy to define in a concrete way with psychopathy the goal was clear and what narcissism has more to do with their with their ego so those are just some ideas some potential ways that in certain circumstances might help to differentiate Psychopaths from narcissists of course the only way to really have a solid idea is to go to a licensed and qualified counselor and they really have the training that helps them to distinguish these complex personality traits especially when you consider how occurrences and comorbidities of co-occurrences other personality traits and comorbidity with other disorders it can become extremely complicated very quickly but again just a rough idea of some of the things that I've noticed that are helpful ways to differentiate them to some extent I know that this is an interesting topic for a lot of people because a lot of people have experience with Psychopaths and narcissists in their lives so if you have any ideas about signs or symptoms that I might have missed ways that would help differentiate the two conditions please put those in the comments I always enjoy reading those comments but also I think that a lot of people that watch these videos enjoy reading the comments and entering into a discussion about these types of topics I hope you found this description of psychopathy and narcissism to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 393,694

Rating: 4.9248495 out of 5

Keywords: Psychopath, narcissist, psychopathy, narcissism, psychopathology, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM, primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy, factor 1, factor 2, grandiose, vulnerable, callous, unemotional, pathological lying, manipulative, bold, fearless dominance, irresponsible, impulsive, need for stimulation, jealousy, entitlement, arrogance, insecurity, hypersensitivity to criticism, shame, guilt, sadness

Id: 19RHMZH2Nh4

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 11 2019