Loren Booda said:
Antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy) is primarily a learned condition, as are most personality disorders. It is a very ingrained personality disorder, often arising from Oppositional Defiant Disorder, itself often rooted in maladaptation to abuse in childhood.
Sociopaths will attack others at any convenient, perceived provocation - such as empathy. Such people can "think" emotions as others feel them. Psychologists are readily fooled by their deceit.
Do any of you know the differences and similarities between sociopathy and sadism?
This flies in the face of established medicine and psychology; personality disorders are not well understood in their origins, but they are not "learned". Sociopaths display "conduct disorder" or "ODD" in Europe, but that's simply the juvenile manifestation and criteria for the later diagnosis. Sociopaths are certainly born and made, they are not JUST made or learned.
I'd add, they don't attack due to perceived provocations relating to empathy, they LACK empathy and to be blunt, MOST don't fool anybody. The concept of "Superficial Charm" is very much a product of older thinking, along with "no anxiety". When someone who fails to show a capacity for impulse control, appropriate affect when challenged properly, lacks empathy, remorse, and insight... THEN you have the beginning of the correct diagnostic criteria.
I'd add, sadism and sociopathy are utterly different as Proton has said; sociopaths can be sadistic, but generally they simply "blow right through people" to get to their goals. MOST are not charming, not the Ted Bundy's or Ma doffs of the world... most actually cause a visceral reaction in people that's quite negative, but which we are trained to ignore: don't judge a book by its cover. It's in that setting that a sociopath can semi-adapt, but their lack of impulse control and planning, even for their own sake beyond immediate wants and needs is almost always their undoing.
Sadism is one of many Paraphililias, and isn't a Personality Disorder, or in any way related to ASPD. Sorry Loren Booda, but your information is horribly askew this time... not sure why. I think you're working with a combination of older diagnostic manuals both US and EU, and some personal interpretations. Sadistic Personality Disorder, non sexual type no longer EXISTS as a condition anymore.
Now, you could argue that it should be, but there are a world of good reasons why not, including the general absence of it as an isolated disorder, but rather an element of others. Sexual Sadism still exists as a paraphilia along with Masochism.
For the modern basics, but just the bare basics... not perfect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
P.S. Sociopaths come from all walks of life, not just traumatic childhoods... you may be thinking of serial killers, although that's a tough one, and also not always the case. In fact, a serial killer is not always a sociopath, and certainly most sociopaths are not serial killers... about a 1/4 end up a bums/hobos (literally, in the old sense), and most of the rest end in jail or death.
...Oh, and business and politics, but while they fill that arena, (generally the latter) it's still a vanishin minority of sociopaths.