This video answers the question: What is the difference between primary and secondary psychopathy? When we talk about the construct of psychopathy, we are talking about a construct that is fairly similar to the mental disorder “antisocial personality disorder,” which is in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Actually, psychopathy is similar to all of the Cluster B personality disorders: antisocial, narcissistic, and to a lesser extent it is associated with borderline and histrionic personality disorder. The way we could think of these two constructs, psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder, would be that antisocial personality disorder is defined mostly based on behaviors and psychopathy is defined partially on behaviors, but it also adds this interpersonal component. The way these two constructs are measured is a bit different and the way they're used in the research is a bit different. Usually the way we think about them is that most everyone who has psychopathy would also qualify for antisocial personality disorder, but only some individuals with antisocial personality would also qualify as having psychopathy. When we look at the construct of psychopathy a little more closely we see that it can be divided in the two major types and that's what I'm really talking about here in today's video: primary versus secondary psychopathy. A lot of times the term primary psychopathy can be synonymous with the term psychopathy. A lot of times when individuals in research say psychopathy, they really mean primary psychopathy. Secondary psychopathy is sometimes referred to as sociopathy. This term is not common in the research literature anymore, but it really does have the strongest relationship with this construct of secondary psychopathy. This can become a bit confusing because when you hear the term psychopathy, it's not really clear if it's referring to the entire construct or just primary psychopathy. Additionally, sometimes when individuals use sociopathy, they're really talking about psychopathy as opposed to just secondary psychopathy. When we look at primary psychopathy we know there are certain characteristics associated with it: being unemotional, callous, manipulative, calculating, having little or no fear, guilt, remorse, empathy, or anxiety. We also tend to think of primary psychopathy as having an etiology that is genetic more so than environmental. Psychopathy has a fairly strong association with antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. When we talk about secondary psychopathy, we see a different set of characteristics. Sometimes secondary psychopathy is referred to by this term antisocial deviance. Secondary psychopathy is more associated with criminal behavior than is primary psychopathy. We also see a number of other characteristics: being rash, impulsive, emotional, anxious, hostile, aggressive, volatile, and self-destructive. Individuals that secondary psychopathy also tend to be more disorganized and tend to have a risky decision-making style when compared to individuals with primary psychopathy.