The LSRP, 26 items
Do I have antisocial personality disorder?
This page is written by Kanika Batra, who is diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder and clinically assessed as Factor 1 psychopathy by her psychiatrist. That pair of facts is also the answer to the question most people arrive here with, because ASPD and psychopathy are not the same thing and the difference is the whole reason the search exists. ASPD is a DSM diagnosis, built mostly out of behaviour, and a clinician makes it from a history. Psychopathy is a research construct measured on a clinician-rated checklist, and it takes in an interior the DSM criteria barely touch. Below is what the diagnosis is actually made of, in the manual's own order, then the screen this site can honestly offer you and what it can and cannot say.
The seven criteria a clinician assesses
Before the list, the reason it is not a scoring sheet. DSM-5-TR asks for a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others since the age of fifteen, shown by three or more of the seven below. Three of seven is not the diagnosis. The manual also requires evidence of conduct disorder with onset before the age of fifteen, which is a history somebody else has to establish, and a differential against schizophrenia and bipolar episodes that only a clinician is placed to make. Neither of those can come out of a questionnaire, which is why nothing on this site can settle the question. The seven are here in the manual's order because almost nobody who searches the term has been shown what is actually being assessed.
Failure to conform to social norms
Repeated acts that are grounds for arrest, whether or not an arrest happened.
Deceitfulness
Repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
Impulsivity
Acting without planning ahead, as a pattern rather than as an incident.
Irritability and aggressiveness
Repeated physical fights or assaults.
Reckless disregard for safety
For the person's own safety, or for other people's.
Consistent irresponsibility
Repeated failure to sustain work or to honour financial obligations.
Lack of remorse
Indifference to, or rationalisation of, having hurt, mistreated or stolen from someone.
One requirement was left out above because it is the least interesting of them: the person has to be at least eighteen. The one worth noticing instead is the shape of the seven. Six of them describe behaviour and one describes the interior, and that ratio is the whole disagreement between this diagnosis and the psychopathy construct, which is the next section.
ASPD is not psychopathy, and here is the gap
What ASPD is
A DSM category
A diagnosis, made by a clinician, resting mainly on what a person has done since the age of fifteen and on evidence of conduct problems before that. Six of the seven criteria describe behaviour. One describes the interior.
What psychopathy is
A research construct
A dimension measured on Hare's clinician-rated checklist, which splits into the interpersonal-affective core (Factor 1) and the lifestyle-antisocial shell (Factor 2). The DSM criteria for ASPD sit almost entirely on the Factor 2 side of Hare's split. DSM-5 does carry a "with psychopathic features" specifier for antisocial personality disorder, but in Section III, the alternative model, and not in the criteria set most clinicians diagnose from.
Why the estimates differ
Different instruments, different questions
The NESARC interview of 43,093 US adults put ASPD at 3.6 percent lifetime (Grant et al. 2004). A 2021 meta-analysis of psychopathy across 15 studies and 11,497 adults estimated 4.5 percent, dropping to 1.2 percent in the studies using the clinician-rated checklist (Sanz-Garcia et al.). Those figures answer different questions with different tools and should never be read as one number.
What this page can offer, and what it refuses to
Nothing here diagnoses ASPD, and the reason is specific rather than legal boilerplate. The diagnosis requires evidence of conduct disorder before the age of fifteen and a differential against other conditions, and no self-report questionnaire can establish either. Any online test claiming to tell you that you have ASPD is claiming access it does not have.
What this site runs instead is the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, twenty-six items, published in 1995 and normed on 487 US undergraduates. It scores the psychopathy construct rather than the diagnosis, on two scales: primary, the callous and manipulative end, and secondary, the impulsive and reactive end. The secondary scale is the one that overlaps the ASPD criteria most heavily, so it is the number to read first if this is the question that brought you.
If the answer matters to you, the road is a clinician with a personality disorder background, an interview, and a history. A screen is a reason to make the appointment and never a substitute for it. If you are in distress, contact a licensed therapist, or a crisis line if there is risk to you or to anyone else.
The manual, and where to check it
DSM-5 offers a "with psychopathic features" specifier for antisocial personality disorder, describing psychopathy as a variant marked by a lack of anxiety or fear and a bold interpersonal style that may mask maladaptive behaviours. Its traits are low anxiousness, low withdrawal and high attention seeking.
Section III, the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (Emerging Measures and Models). It is not part of the Section II criteria set most clinicians diagnose from.
Fuller, E. K., Gatner, D. T., & Douglas, K. S. (2023). Concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity of the DSM-5 Section III psychopathy specifier. Assessment, 30(6), 1790-1810. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911221124344
Where to go next
Each of these is a different instrument on the same question, and every one of them is free.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have antisocial personality disorder?
A page cannot answer that, and this one will not pretend to. The diagnosis needs a clinician, an interview, and evidence of conduct problems before the age of fifteen, which is a history rather than a questionnaire answer. What you can do here is read the seven criteria in the manual's own words, then take a research self-report that scores the overlapping construct, and take the result to somebody qualified to use it.
Can an online ASPD test diagnose me?
No online test can, this one included. The criterion requiring evidence of conduct disorder before the age of fifteen cannot be met by self-report, and the differential against bipolar and psychotic conditions is a clinical judgement. A screen can tell you that your answers resemble a pattern. That is a reason to seek an assessment, and it is not the assessment.
Is ASPD the same as being a sociopath?
Sociopath is not a diagnosis in the DSM or in ICD-11, so there is no formal equivalence to check. In ordinary use it points at roughly what ASPD describes, which is why five of the pages ranking for this search are titled sociopath test. The manual's term is Antisocial Personality Disorder, and the reason to prefer it is that it comes with criteria you can read rather than a vibe you cannot argue with.
Is ASPD the same as psychopathy?
No. ASPD is a DSM diagnosis built mostly from behaviour since the age of fifteen. Psychopathy is a research construct measured on a clinician-rated checklist that adds the interpersonal and affective core: the charm, the grandiosity, the absent remorse. Most of what separates the two lives on that core. DSM-5 does carry a "with psychopathic features" specifier for antisocial personality disorder, but in Section III, the alternative model, and not in the criteria set most clinicians diagnose from. The specifier describes psychopathy as a variant marked by a lack of anxiety or fear and a bold interpersonal style that may mask maladaptive behaviours, which is the Factor 1 half arriving in the manual by a side door.
What are the criteria for ASPD?
Seven, of which three or more are required, present since the age of fifteen: failure to conform to social norms, deceitfulness, impulsivity, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for safety, consistent irresponsibility, and lack of remorse. Around them sit three further requirements: the person is at least eighteen, there is evidence of conduct disorder before the age of fifteen, and the pattern does not occur only during schizophrenia or a bipolar episode.
Can ASPD be treated?
There is no medication for the diagnosis, and the psychological evidence base is thin and aimed mostly at behaviour rather than at the interior. What does move is the part that is regulation: impulse control, consequences, the gap between wanting and doing. What moves less is the affective core, and the useful work there is knowing the pattern well enough to predict yourself. A clinician who works with personality disorders will give you a straighter answer about your own case than any page can.
Who wrote this?
Kanika Batra, diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder and clinically assessed as Factor 1 psychopathy by her psychiatrist. That is a clinician's assessment, not a self-description. It is also why this page spends its first section on the criteria rather than on a list of red flags: the criteria are what the diagnosis is, and almost nobody searching the term has been shown them.
Nothing on this page or its results is a diagnosis. A band is a reading aid; only a clinician can diagnose, and only with a proper assessment. Every figure on a result describes people who took this quiz. Aggregates live on the Dark Mirror Index, and the long read is the ASPD and sociopathy guide.