Has a sociopath ever made a positive contribution to society?

I’m sure that they probably make positive contributions all the time, though obviously not for altruistic reasons. The question would be whether the net contribution over the course of their life was positive or negative. Most of them probably wind up negative due to their pathological inability to give a damn about anybody else.

I believe in his early years, Ted Bundy manned a suicide hotline. Perhaps he talked one person or more out of committing suicide.

It would be hard to say that has never happened, because not all sociopaths rise to the level of a mass murderer – or even a common, garden-variety one-off murderer, for that matter. So we don’t know at all who all of the sociopaths in society have been, or are.

Many sociopaths – we’re told – run businesses, successful businesses, from all economic and other indications and metrics of success. The reason that the business is successful generally results from satisfying large numbers of customers. While it might be wrong to say that the sociopath who runs the company – if it is true that the manager is a sociopath – caused that success is difficult for an outsider to say. That person may have impeded the much greater potential success of the company.

In any case, since we normally assign the success (or failure) of a business to its owner / manager, then it would be fair to say that a sociopath running a successful business “is responsible for that success”.

You didn’t ask whether everyone liked him (or her), you just asked about “positive contribution”, and by most metrics increasing the wealth of society in general is a positive contribution.

Sure. They tend to like to have a positive mask. It tends to be very effective at concealing and enabling their abuses and torments and destruction. Y’know, helpin’ out and seemin’ nice while torturing pets and children and whoever else they feel like victimizing. It’s so much easier when they seem to be a good person to others.

Can you name one who is positively remembered, a well known public figure?

There are a lot of psychopaths that have been successful contributors to society, but sociopaths by definition live on the fringe of society, are erratic, and often prone to violence. Sociopaths don’t deal with others well enough to be a positive public figure.

Sociopaths don’t feel guilt or empathy right? It seems that there are these people all around us. They are not necessarily criminals or going around hurting people.People have blue prints from their parents.Sociopaths understand consequence. They are probably very successful because they are not easily manipulated by guilt. If a situation benefits them and others, of course they can do good in the world. Their persona can get them what they want. Doing good can make you look good.

@greatfullara Actually, sociopaths can feel a lot of empathy, where psychopaths feel none. Sociopaths can identify as victims, which is one thing that can trigger their anger and violence. It also serves them as justification.

There are good, decent sociopaths & psychopaths all around us. They integrate and contribute because they understand consequence & not because of remorse or emotion. Perhaps some realize who they are and act accordingly. Here is a famous example. While I know a few people who are sociopathic and consider them “friends” I generally try to identify and steer clear to the best of my ability. I’m generally frank and to the point but also a very empathetic person and don’t usually see eye to eye with someone who is not. Something from the linked example that resonates with me: “I was loved, and that protected me” has profound implications that transcend all the petty things many of us think matter but are actually trivial.

Interesting link, @ARE_you_kidding_me, and that’s something that I’ve wondered about in the past, whether someone with those tendencies can not just “mask” them, that is, to hide them from the world (perhaps even from himself), but to overcome them, redirect them and not let them control him. And of course, from all that appeared in the article, we have only his word for the stories not told: that he has not raped, murdered or committed other violent and aggressive acts. It would be clever in the extreme if he did have a violent criminal past – with no arrests – and still managed to present to the world, “Hey, look at me! I’m a non-violent, non-criminal good-guy psychopath!”

Adolf Hitler…he got Germany working again boosting their economy

@CWOTUS I wondered about that too. Seems only a sociopath could turn that around and make it a positive.

Well…John Wayne Gacy dressed up as a clown and visited sick children in the hospital but not sure that bit of altruism makes much of a difference when he had a basement full of bodies of young men in his basement. lol

The other thing that’s impossible to know is “who among the victims might have been an even worse person?” given the time to become so. If that could be known (and how could it?) or in some way scientifically predicted, then there could be a net benefit to eliminating future violent criminals.

It’s one of the fatal flaws behind various time travel stories where the protagonists plan to go back in time to murder “baby Hitler”. Who is going to feel good about murdering a baby, no matter what he might rationally believe about the baby’s potential future impact on the world? An interesting aside to this was a recent cartoon I saw where the time traveler, upon returning to the future after completing ‘his mission’, reported to his commander, “I know you wanted me to kill baby Hitler, but I went back further in time to kill Woodrow Wilson instead,” and the commander’s only question was “Who is Hitler?”

To Romanians, Vlad Dracula is a national hero. To anyone else, he is a monster.