I believe that psychopaths have some understanding of emotion, however it is a theoretical understanding. Just like a male may have an understanding of female traits without experiencing them themselves. For example, I have theoretical knowledge that females are typically attracted to dominant personality types, desire emotional bonding more than sexual recreation etc....however these things do not apply so much to me. Essentially psychopaths have theory of mind, however they lack emotions themselves. They are still capable of mimicking appropriate emotions due to the fact that they theoretically know what is expected of them in certain situations, for example they know that if a relative dies they are supposed to feel sad. Thus, they will act as if they feel sad even though they don't. One of their primary tricks is to mimic those around them, so if they are with their normal brothers and sisters at their parents funeral, they will copy their behaviors and mannerisms, despite not having an emotional cause for displaying these mannerisms. Autistic people on the other hand tend to have deficits in theory of mind, to various extents, depending on the severity of their Autism. They may struggle to determine what others are feeling or thinking in the first place. They have less theoretical knowledge of what they are expected to feel in social situations. They also tend to have blunted emotions, compared to neurotypical people anyway. There are actually a hand full of similarities between autism and psychopathy. Both rely on mimicking to an extent, psychopaths due to a lack of natural emotions as well as a desire to blend in, autistic people due to a lack of theory of mind and lack of theoretical understanding of how they are expected to behave in a social situation. Psychopaths are generally better at mimicking though, likely because of their superior ability to have a theoretical understanding of emotion. In fact when Aspergers Syndrome was first introduced, it was originally called Autistic Sociopathy. I have been diagnosed as being on the Autistic spectrum, however not with socipathy. I do feel as if my emotions are not as pronounced as a neurotypical persons. I feel that this is to my advantage in some ways, I strongly believe that many neurotypical people allow emotion to cloud their minds and turn them irrational. Think of the children propaganda has little to no effect on me, for example. Although an ability to be more logical is something I see as an advantage, there are some disadvantages to having less emotion than normal as well. I have trouble relating to / interacting with most normal people, although I prefer to interact and relate with more logical analytical and rational people anyway. I do sometimes find myself mimicking in social situations, but I am also quite certain that I have a strong theory of mind and theoretical understanding of social interactions and emotion, probably as I am quite high functioning and would likely be considered as having a mild form of savant syndrome (despite this not being a real diagnosis). As you can see, this means that I am a strong systemizer and have deficits as an empathizer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathizing%E2%80%93systemizing_theory However I have no difficulties with systematizing human emotion and having a decent theoretical understanding of emotion and theory of mind. Additionally, I do experience a wide range of emotion, although I do not think I do as much as an average human or as strongly as an average human. I also feel that although I can identify emotions in others to a decent although likely below average extent, that I am not strongly influenced by others emotions. Seeing a sad person is not likely to make me feel sad, and I guess that is what empathy is, so obviously I have deficits in empathy as compared to average humans. However, this is not always the case, it is just significantly more often the case for me than for average humans IMO. So in summary, I would not really consider myself to be a sociopath or psychopath, however if sociopathy is considered as a spectrum, I would say I am mildly autistic with some mild savant traits, and perhaps I could be considered as mildly sociopathic stemming from this. edit: I suppose you could say that sociopaths maintain cognitive empathy but lack affective empathy, whereas autistic people tend to lack theory of mind and affective empathy, or only theory of mind while maintaining affective empathy. However, I would define these things as cognitive empathy: Theoretical understanding of others mind states affective empathy: Desire/ability to respond appropriately to others mind states with such definition it becomes more apparent that psychopaths maintain cognitive empathy but have a near total lack of affective empathy, where as those on Autistic spectrum tend to either have various degrees of deficit in both, or only have deficit in cognitive empathy while maintaining a closer to normal level of affective empathy (generally higher functioning autism I would say).