Are ENTPs more prone to antisocial behaviour? No. Let’s break the stereotype.

What is a sociopath?

A sociopath is someone who idealises and takes pride in unethical behaviour or acting in ways that are manipulative, hurtful, antisocial, and malicious.

The ENTP Personality Type

The ENTP is a person that gets energy, passion, stability, and control when able to act with tactical prowess and pragmatism to intercept new opportunities and possibilities. Focused on what works, what offers the best results, and what can get you ahead. Ethics or the lack thereof is not the core motive of an ENTP, but reason, ratios, common sense, accuracy, opportunity and change is.

Why the ENTP is not a sociopath

In my studies of ENTPs, I have found ENTPs often spearheading the battle against climate change. Many of the political pundits and thinkers on the frontline of environmental issues are ENTPs, including Bill Gates, George Monbiot and many more. Together with many of the ENTJs, they enjoy exploring the new innovation, the technical challenges, and the opportunities that climate change and the fight against climate change can offer.

The ENTP will often consider the destruction of our environment as a sign of collective insanity or stupidity. It is unreasonable to cause such massive harm and damage and to hold on to old technology, in the eyes of the ENTP. The ENTP looks at human rights issues pragmatically, and observes what solutions can help reduce poverty, bring forward freedom, democracy, and innovation. The ENTP is often a catalyst who brings forward new ideas that make a difference for people suffering across the globe.

How The ENTP Loves

Where the sociopath is characterised by not caring for the rules, the ENTP is often a person that enjoys discussing and questioning rules and gets their passion from challenging bad rules and coming up with ways to change rules for the better.

Where the sociopath is characterised by a general apathy, the ENTP has a natural knack and passion for tactical thinking, observing counter-moves, and seeing ways to improve a situation for themselves and others. ENTPs as friends tend to make ample problem-solvers. When they see friends and family suffer, they come up with solutions to improve your situation. And this is their love language. Don’t miss it. It’s wonderful and sweet. The fact that you miss it may stem from a misconception of virtue ethics as the only true ethics. Healthy ENTPs are often some brand of utilitarians, focused on offering improvement for society as a whole. And utilitarianism is one of the most popular modern theories of ethics, though it’s conclusions can occasionally clash with the conclusions of virtue ethics.

The ENTP Love Language

They often have lots of ideas for how you can improve and offer plenty of advice and ideas that you can use to achieve greater results in many arenas. Now, the idea of the ENTP as a sociopath may have emerged from people that judge the ENTP from what they lack rather than what they offer. ENTPs may sometimes be accused of lacking character or ethical resolve. They do not always do what is ethically right, but what is smart. Of course, this is just a different take on ethics:

What is smart can be to invest more in renewables, what is ethical can be to stop investing in coal power. Sometimes we confuse the two: but they’re both brands of ethics.

We can here confuse the motives of the ENTP, thinking they only invest in renewables hoping to earn money, but the ENTP usually loves a win-win scenario. The ENTP will not idealise bad or malicious behaviour, but smart behaviour. The sociopath will idealise bad behaviour, even if it is unwise or unintelligent. For example taking a bad deal, if it means other people get an even worse one.

The ENTP is often a collaborator and a diplomat, a negotiator, who works together with people to come up with great solutions. They make connections, networks, and deals, and they offer advantages and benefits for people who work together with them.

They scout opportunities and share opportunities with others, and create smart investment strategies. Where the sociopath has a destructive or malicious interest of bringing pain or enjoying seeing other people fail, the ENTP hates unnecessary pain or violence.

Why The ENTP Can Appear Like A Sociopath

When an ENTP is not valued for their wit and their intelligence and abilities, the ENTP can find themselves bored with life and apathic. If there is no outlet or challenge for their mind, and their solutions are misunderstood or dismissed without any thought or consideration of others, the boredom may drive a hidden frustration and general dissatisfaction in the ENTP.

The ENTPs conscience is found in their thinking, and when judged by their character rather than their intelligence, who they are rather than what they contribute, ENTPs can feel dismissed and invalidated. Here, they may decide that “If you see me as a bad guy, I might as well be the bad guy” and there’s a stubbornness here – the ENTPs special brand of ENTP-4 that says “I will do the evil thing to prove that you can’t control me or force me to be something I don’t want to be.” Note the defensive mechanism here.

But as I have said many times, sociopaths often behave at many times illogically. They do the malicious thing even when it comes at everyone’s expense and when it sabotages good opportunities. A healthy ENTP does what is smart and prioritises win-win solutions for all of us. And ENTPs are responsible for bringing forward positive growth and progress all over the world. So why do people give them such a bad reputation? 

Read more in The Hero Code