This video answers the question: What is the sociopathic stare? sometimes this is referred to as the psychopathic stare, which may actually be a better name. We've heard the sociopathic stare referred to by a lot of descriptors: cold, detached, emotionless, lifeless, dead, blank, empty, icy, intense, piercing, and penetrating. There are a lot of different adjectives to describe this particular phenomenon. To understand the sociopathic stare or the psychopathic stare, we need to understand a little bit about psychopathy versus sociopathy and how that relates to antisocial personality disorder. Psychopathy has two factors: factor 1 and factor 2. With Factor 1 (interpersonal/affective), we see traits like superficial charm, grandiosity, callousness, unemotional, fearless dominance manipulativeness, having a lack of empathy, shallow affect and pathological lying. Factor 2 (social deviance) has a different set of characteristics: excitementseeking, parasitic lifestyle, impulsivity, irresponsibility, poor behavioral controls, and criminal versatility. Factor 2 psychopathy is much closer to the diagnosis in the DSM of antisocial personality disorder than Factor 1 psychopathy. A lot of times when we talk about sociopathy we're really talking about factor 2 psychopathy, which is why the sociopathic stare is really probably better referred to as the psychopathic stare. A lot of the characteristics with Factor 1 psychopathy appear to line up with this particular type of staring.