Recall these countless incidents where someone in your class, family or neighborhood was just not interested in hanging out with anyone for some time, or for a long time. You’d usually call them antisocial, throwing around words like introvert, friends, alone. The truth is, this person or, on a realistic scale, those people are not antisocial. They’re asocial. And there is a major difference between the two.
Let’s start with antisocial, a word that always gets thrown away out of context. In reality, antisocial is a personality disorder, a condition where a person disregards what is right or wrong, doesn’t have empathy and ignores others feelings. It’s also characterized by manipulation and harsh treatment. It also relates to sociopathy – a sociopath is extremely antisocial and has no conscience. Antisocial personality disorder (APD) is caused by environmental or genetic factors, for example: child abuse or an antisocial parent. APD is often related to criminal behaviors, disregard of the law and rules, and needs to be treated if the behavior is excessive.
Oppositely, asocial is not a personality disorder. Asocial means withdrawn from society. It simply develops as a person’s attitude in life. A lot of asocial people generally do not take any interest in socializing, while also fearing the judgement of those around them. It’s also related to the lack of motivation to socialize. This should not be mistaken with introversion, of course, some introverts are asocial, but extreme asociality is a medical/clinical condition.
It’s very important to notice the difference between those two words, if someone wants to be alone, this doesn’t mean that they’re antisocial, its a personality disorder, but they could just be asocial, or even an introvert.
