Trying to diagnose a fictional character can be pretty moot, but over the years we know enough about Palpatine to actually serve up a great profile.

1. Sociopathy is not an official condition and is not well defined.

2. Palpatine does not in any way appear to have a social or mental illness. He is just a very, VERY evil person.

Definitely psychopathic. He literally enjoyed bringing pain to others and he shows no remorse or guilt for any of his actions, nor does he show any actual empathy. Palpatine is a master at deceiving people and manipulating people like Anakin and Dooku to join the dark side. The man is just evil, that’s it.

Yep that pretty much sums up Palpatine

And yet having the same attributes as a psychopath is meaningless when the underlying mental illness is missing. Having curly white fur and floppy ears only makes you a sheep if you're a sheep.

If you're curious, multiple mental health professionals have also addressed this very same issue regarding Darth Vader and Kylo Ren. Find that with Google - I'm not sure about the policies on external links. Polling Wookieepedians should just be for fun, as there are much better ways to find introspective and scientific analyses.

Nobody says Darth Vader or Kylo Ren is a “psychopath”…

Where did you find people who say that?

@StarWarsFanGirl8000 The scientific conclusion is that Vader and Kylo were also not psychopaths, but were definitely mentally ill. They quite clearly were, and in a way that Palpatine never demonstrated himself to be. Palpatine was plain and simply pure evil. He was largely responsible for breaking both Anakin and Ben inside, but they are not the topic of this board. If you ever wanna chat in depth about this stuff for real, just let me know. I will gladly steal more time away from actual work to provide legit reasoning for such a beloved fandom :)

Yeah Vader and Kylo Ren were definitely both mentally ill

The link above on the difference between psychopathy and sociopathy does not offer accurate definitions on either.

First, psychopathy and sociopathy are not mutually exclusive, and Darth Sidious is both.

Second, psychopathy is defined by a neurological and biochemical inability to feel empathy for others, where empathy is defined as the feeling of distress in the presence of others' suffering, to have others' suffering reflected onto you. Note that psychopathy and empathy is a spectrum. (Palpatine, Hemlock, and Tarkin occupy the extreme pole of psychopathy; Qui-Gon Jinn and Omega occupy the extreme pole of empathy.) Traits like dishonesty, narcissism, manipulative behaviour, and feigning emotions cannot be used to identify psychopathy. Narcissism is a separate personality disorder.

Sociopathy is a synonym for anti-social personality disorder which is indeed more vague, and it is determined based on patterns of harmful behaviour to society and others. But again, "constant lying and deception" or "aggressive and reckless behaviour" are not traits that necessarily indicate sociopathy. Han Solo was probably a constant liar in his heyday as a smuggler, and Poe Dameron could be pretty reckless, and clearly neither are sociopaths.

The oft-repeated guidelines is that "psychopaths are born; sociopaths are made". Psychopathy certainly makes it more likely to develop sociopathy. An inability to feel empathy for others makes it far easier to devalue the lives of others, but psychopathy does not necessarily lead to sociopathy or sadism. There are intelligent, "high-functioning" psychopaths who live their lives without normally going out of the way to hurt others because they appeal to authority or the status quo and know the consequences of crime is impractical for their own lives. For these individuals, the psychopathy may be more subtle, but it comes out more in their interpersonal relationships or in their unethical work practices or in their lack of remorse for harming others.

On the other hand, sociopathy may arise in individuals who were not psychopaths to begin with. In some cases studies, it was found that there are individuals diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder who are actually more reactive in the presence of suffering than the average individual. This is because some individuals become sociopaths as a result of adverse life conditions. People who grow up in traumatic environments or in societies where violence is the norm are more likely to become sociopaths. However, the archetypal sociopath is the individual who is wholeheartedly willing to commit mass atrocities or war crimes, as Sith do. The Sith ideology, in fact, outright encourages sociopathy.

Which is more evil? The psychopath may or may not actually go out of their way to commit actions that are harmful to others, but they always lack remorse for how they have hurt others. On the other hand, non-psychopathic sociopaths theoretically are redeemable because the ability to feel remorse is there; it just may have been suppressed for a variety of reasons.

Darth Vader is the best example of an individual who is a sociopath but not a psychopath. He is clearly not born with a total lack of empathy for others. As a child, Anakin Skywalker even risked his life to save a Tusken Raider. He cares profoundly for his close friends and family. Even though, as has been discussed at length before, his sense of love is ultimately ego-based (more selfish than selfless, more possessive than compassionate), the fact he can feel pain and distress when his loved ones are hurt disproves a neurological inability to feel empathy. However, his fall to the dark side can also be described as his becoming a sociopath, as he ends up fully willing to massacre younglings, murder his former friends, and commit genocide. Still, I do believe that Anakin was never the most empathetic individual because of a strong in-group/out-group distinction in his application of compassion.

Darth Sidious is very definitively written to be both a psychopath and a sociopath. He is also a sadist since he enjoys the suffering he inflicts. He is written out to be a pure evil individual who was born without hint of empathy for others, and there are no limits to the pain and destruction he wrought on others.

A psychopath who is not a sociopath is harder to identify. I was personally really quick to identify Crosshair as a psychopath, but his recent development makes me doubt to what extent he really was since theoretically, psychopaths can never learn to truly care for others. But since Crosshair can at least be described as weak on empathy, he may be our closest example. To be honest, prior to the introduction of the inhibitor chips, it sounded like clone troopers were being written as non-sociopathic psychopaths, hence why they were able to execute Order 66 without hesitation or remorse, but this was disproven even as early as The Cestus Deception (2003).

One last thing: take care to note that psychopathy is not a condition diagnosable by psychiatry, but it is in use in criminology, and the conceptual distinction with sociopathy is still recognized in the pertinent fields.

My source for these definitions of psychopathy and sociopathy is Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction (2020) by Essi Viding, published by Oxford University Press. It is a very comprehensive book detailing the distinction between the two and the case studies that highlight these differences.

Good question. He wasn't a complete psychopath because even he knew killing for the sake of killing was pointless and beneath him. While he didn't mind genocide he did show traits of admiration nd restraint for some people. He didn't have to rescue vader on Mustafa. He didn't have to give luke the benefit of doubt when trying to seduce him to the darkside. He had the death star at his disposal. He saw no point in destroying planets and civilizations because that meant Noone to conquer and rule over

He exhibited both traits but he was also intelligent, patient, thought provoking and tactful.

I think its both, but I will just put psychotic because thats what he is shown to be a lot.