Sociopath Test

The Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-II) comes from the work of Robert D. Hare, Timothy J. Harpur, and James F. Hemphill, who published the 60-item SRP-II in 1989 as a revision of Hare's earlier self-report scale, designed to assess the same construct as Hare's Psychopathy Checklist. Because earlier two-factor models did not fit well, Whitney S. Lester, Randall T. Salekin, and Martin Sellbom at the University of Alabama derived a 36-item four-factor model in 2013, which fit best in exploratory and confirmatory analyses of 1,257 undergraduate students and held up in a second half of that sample. This test asks those 36 statements word for word and leaves out the 24 SRP-II statements outside the model. You answer on a 5-point agreement scale; the SRP-II's own scale has 7 points, from Disagree Strongly to Agree Strongly.

In everyday conversation, the words sociopathy and psychopathy often overlap. Some writers use "sociopath" for antisocial traits shaped more by upbringing and "psychopath" for a more inborn, emotionally cold pattern, though neither term is an official diagnosis in the DSM, where both fall under antisocial personality disorder. Because traits like risk-taking, slyness, or emotional distance sit on a spectrum that everyone shares to some degree, a mild dose can simply look like calm under pressure or decisiveness, while higher scores point to a broader pattern.

The first two scales look at how you deal with people and rules. Manipulation, which the paper calls the Interpersonal factor, spans 16 statements tapping interpersonal dominance, manipulativeness, and arrogance—such as being crafty or sly, thinking you could beat a lie detector, able to talk your way out of anything, or enjoying giving bossy people a hard time. In Lester, Salekin, and Sellbom (2013), this scale was related to increased pride, emotional detachment, and openness to new experiences, alongside decreased agreeableness and, to a lesser extent, decreased impulse control, feelings of social responsibility, and proneness to shame. Impulsivity, the paper's 9-item Disinhibition/Impulsivity factor, covers changing jobs often, trouble at school and with the police, gambling for large stakes, and seeing rules as made to be broken; it was strongly related to a lack of conscientiousness, low overall emotional intelligence, poor impulse control, and decreased feelings of social responsibility, as well as increased antisocial behavior and risky driving, and, more weakly, to higher neuroticism.

The remaining two scales cover thrill-seeking and emotional detachment. Fearlessness uses 5 statements on driving at high speed, doing dangerous things for the thrill of it, taking chances, and liking quick decisions in a dangerous job. In the 2013 study, Fearlessness was most strongly related to increased risky driving behavior, while also being tied to greater stress tolerance, self-actualization, and functioning in interpersonal relationships, alongside decreased neuroticism and conscientiousness. Coldheartedness uses 6 statements on lacking guilt, not being soft-hearted, and caring little about hurting others' feelings; it was strongly related to a lack of empathy, feelings of social responsibility, extraversion, and agreeableness, and to a lesser degree tied to an avoidant attachment style, increased emotional detachment, and a tendency to blame others.

Your Sociopathy total is the average of all 36 answers, corresponding to the paper's total, the sum of the four correlated factors. Alongside your scores, the chart shows comparison bars from the 1,180 to 1,232 undergraduate students (aged 17 to 51, mean age 19.3, 69.1% women, 81.5% White) who completed the scale in Lester, Salekin, and Sellbom (2013), their averages rescaled to 0 to 100. Because the published averages were given on the 7-point scale and they come from U.S. undergraduates, they are approximate, not general-population norms or percentiles. And because the four-factor model lacks a behavioral criminal factor, it sits closer to an interpersonal and emotional personality profile than to a measure of criminality.

This test is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not a clinical diagnosis. It cannot tell you whether you are a sociopath or a psychopath, nor can it diagnose antisocial personality disorder or predict behavior; only a qualified mental health professional can make a clinical assessment. This test is based on the SRP-II and the four-factor model of Lester, Salekin, and Sellbom (2013), but it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Robert D. Hare, Timothy J. Harpur, James F. Hemphill, Whitney S. Lester, Randall T. Salekin, Martin Sellbom, or the University of Alabama.

References

• Lester, W. S., Salekin, R. T., & Sellbom, M. (2013). The SRP-II as a rich source of data on the psychopathic personality. Psychological Assessment, 25(1), 32-46.
• Hare, R. D., Harpur, T. J., & Hemphill, J. D. (1989). Scoring pamphlet for the Self-Report Psychopathy scale: SRP-II. Unpublished manuscript, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

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