[dannypk16]

Just wanted to make a clear distinction between antisocial and asocial people, since I see there's a serious confusion between both of them.

First of all, let's check what definitions are given for each word:

Definition of antisocial
1 : averse to the society of others : UNSOCIABLE
2 : hostile or harmful to organized society
especially : being or marked by behavior deviating sharply from the social norm
3 psychology : of, relating to, or characteristic of antisocial personality disorder

- Merriam Webster Dictionary

Definition of asocial
: not social: such as
a : rejecting or lacking the capacity for social interaction
b : ANTISOCIAL

- Merriam Webster Dictionary

As we can see, and this happens in every dictionary, antisocial and asocial are used as synonyms, relating both of them to "unsociable", "shy" and similar. It also states that antisocial means "harmful for society" or "someone that suffers from ASPD". Now, let's see what ASPD is:

Someone with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) has a reckless disregard for others and often for himself (most people with antisocial personality disorder are male). He doesn't want to conform to social norms and willfully destroys property, steals or manipulates others for personal profit, or overindulges in pleasure-seeking behavior. For example, he speeds, drives while drunk, engages in risky sex, or uses drugs.

- Psychcentral

I saw people saying that ASPD should be renamed to stop confusions with the word "asocial" and similar, but the word "antisocial" is correctly used in this personality disorder. The prefix "anti-" means against, in the case of "antisocial" means "against society", and this totally fits with the definition of ASPD - clearly related with sociopathy and psychopathy. There should be a clear distinction between "antisocial" and "asocial", since someone unsociable cannot be related with someone totally sociable, as many antisocial people haven't got trouble being sociable.

If you've come here because you feel, or you are, unsociable, shy, suffer from social anxiety and similar, and you've got empathy, you don't lack of remorse or guilt, are able of feeling as much emotions as neurotypicals (happiness, sadness/depression, anger and so on), you don't constantly tell lies for your own profit or entertainment, you don't constantly feel boredom and you've got a low self-esteem, you don't fit that much with the antisocial/ASPD or psychopathy criteria.

Instead, you could look for Social Anxiety Disorder, depression and similar. Or maybe you simply haven't got a disorder and you're simply shy or bad at being sociable. You should start calling yourself an asocial rather than an antisocial.

[Skeezyks]

I don't consider myself to be "antisocial". I'm simply against me being social.

[Atypical_Disaster]

People such as yourself have tried to make this distinction clear here before. Unfortunately it seems to have little effect, as most who come through here appear to have an apparent allergy to reading.

[dannypk16]

Originally Posted by Atypical_Disaster

People such as yourself have tried to make this distinction clear here before. Unfortunately it seems to have little effect, as most who come through here appear to have an apparent allergy to reading.

That's why I made this, people's not going to check if their definition of "antisocial" is related with ASPD because they already have an only definition for the word. Would you actually search the definition of "apple" if you already have a definition for it? You could be wrong, but you've got an idea-definition already which you think is true.

However, if people come here because they feel they're unsociable, shy or find it hard to be sociable, they should know they're searching for the word "asocial" rather than "antisocial", and I hope the title explains basically that antisocial and asocial are two different words, if you don't know one word, you would feel interested in knowing what does the other word mean (or if you think both words are synonyms).