Eric Cartman is a Socio-Psychopath.
A sociopath, as defined by the dictionary is “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior; and a lack of conscience.” Pay special attention to the “lack of conscience” part. Just for good measure, let’s define “conscious”. Of course there are many definitions, but the one that matters is “inwardly sensible of wrongdoing.”
A psychopath, as defined by the dictionary, is “a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.” Empathy, of course, is the ability step outside of oneself, and consider the emotional experience of somebody else. Throughout this paper, I plan to explore, define, and ultimately “out” Eric Cartman, from the T.V. show South Park, as a sociopath and a psychopath. First, let’s discuss the parent condition of these two disorders—personality disorders—is.
Rathus, author of Psych, says; “Personality disorders, like personality traits, are characterized by enduring patterns of behavior. Personality disorders, however, are inflexible and maladaptive.” In other words, somebody with a personality disorder exhibits traits of that disorder in ways that other people would demonstrate traits like personability, warmth, etc. However, unlike the common personality traits, the characteristic traits of a personality disorder are “inflexible and maladaptive”; meaning they don’t react well to new stimuli provided by situations that break their brains pattern of life. For a moment, let’s talk about the brain.
The brain—the most complex organism in the universe—loves to find and adapt to patterns*. Take for example, music. Our brains respond so well to music because our brain loves predicting harmonic patterns. Subconsciously, we are predicting the next notes, chords, and resolutions. When we predict a pattern that actually occurs in music, we release dopamine, and we feel happy and accomplished that we have correctly processed the previous information, and properly predicted the harmonic outcome. When our brain predicts a pattern—or note—and the outcome is not our prediction, we slow the secretion of dopamine in our brain, which causes feelings of uncertainty, confusion, regret, remorse and so on. However, recent studies have shown that it when the patterns are broken in music, that we actually may enjoy it even more.** When a pattern our brain is broken, not just in melodic prediction, but in all aspects of life, we are able to add that mistaken prediction to the literal memory bank, and learn from it. That is when we learn, by breaking patterns; and when we overcome those low-periods of dopamine: we feel—again—a sense of accomplishment, only this time it’s a greater feeling than if we had correctly predicted the outcome. Now, for somebody with a personality disorder, the breaking of the pattern that his or her brain has predicted could be catastrophic.
Sociopaths are most popularly associated with psychopaths, murderers, and more specifically, serial killers. The main characteristic is defined as a “lack of empathy”. Other description include: artificial charm, gross self-righteousness, pathological lying; incapability of real emotion—or love—and the Freudian “Social Me.” Erratic behavior, uncontrollable desires, impulsive actions, all signs as well. We could go into how this could very well be a frontal cortex problem (the part of the brain believed to be, in large part, a contributing part to the rest of the brain’s functions, and responsible for our ability to think rationally, and enjoy the benefits of metcognition), but that is not for this paper.
Sociopathic behavior is often confused with psychopathic behavior, but the two are not interchangeable, though so would you cannot have a psychopath with out a sociopath. Much like how a square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t always a square. Sociopaths are marked by “anti-social behavior”. A sociopath is the first thing the average person would define a serial killer as; psychopath is similarly defined, but with the addition of violent acts, amoral behavior, and no remorse, regret, or empathy. In other words, predictably, the majority of people are mistaken.
When somebody crosses you, and you think bad thoughts about him or her, maybe even go so far as to fantasize a situation that resulted unfavorably for them; something stops you from acting. Something even makes you feel bad about your thoughts (hopefully.) If not—if you can imagine, and carry out heinous acts of inhumanity, however small or large, with no guilt, even if you force that guilt upon yourself, you may have a problem—and no, an episode of South Park won’t help you.
Psychopaths have flooded the news for years. Gein, Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy—all psychopaths. The most famous movie to dive into the mind of a serial killer was of course, American Psycho. The motivations for Patrick Batemen’s (main character) crimes are unfathomable to the average person. A scene in which Bateman becomes jealous of the superiority of a co-workers business card is followed by the dismemberment of said co-worker. The business card posed a threat to Bateman, and, in his psychopathic head, symbolized domination by his co-worker. The only solution, (and by solution, I mean gratification) for Bateman is in the death of the dominator. The irrational fear put forward by the business card, and the actions that followed, are textbook.
I feel I need only use two examples to out Eric Cartman. I realize that two examples is hardly room for scientific study; but we’re talking cartoon characters, so their behavior pattern is far more predictable than that of a human. (Following the assumption that most television shows write from a formula they have created for their show.) For those of you who are avid South Park fans—such as myself—will find these next paragraphs redundant. Those of you who, for whatever depraved reason, have not seen South Park—be warned; and know that I made none of this up. Treat these next words as, a lame case study.
In an episode entitled “Scott Tenorman Must Die”, an older boy, Scott Tenorman, tells Cartman that boys don’t grow pubic hair–they purchase it. Scott than sold Cartman some of his pubic hair for, oh I don’t know, ten dollars. When Cartman approached his friends—Stan, Kyle and Kenny—they informed Cartman that you, in fact, do not purchase pubic hair; you grow it. Cartman than tries many different ways to get his money back, all of them devious. By the end of the episode, Cartman invites Scott Tenorman to a chili cook-off. After a long, intricate plan, Cartman and Scott sit down to eat. Cartman than informs Scott that he knew Scott was going to bring tainted chili; but what Scott didn’t know was that the chili he was eating—the chili made by Cartman—was made with the meat of his parents. Cartman plotted a way for a crazy redneck to shoot Scott’s parents, so that Cartman could cook them in a chili, and feed it to him. If that is not in Ol’ Al Fish’s playbook…
In another episode, called “Casa Bonita”, Kyle’s mom is taking him to a popular themed restaurant called Casa Bonita. The restaurant has performers, a small cave for children to walk through, and a décor designed to make one feel they are south of the border. Cartman immediately becomes excited, and expressed how he can’t wait to go see the mini-cliff divers. Alas, his dreams are crushed when Kyle tells him that because Cartman is “a dick to him” and does nothing but crack Jewish jokes to Kyle, Cartman was not invited. Instead, Kyle was going to take Butters. Cartman, heartbroken, decides to try to be nice to Kyle, to see if he can sway him into allowing Cartman to go with them. (Note, Cartman is not nice to Kyle because he realizes his past actions, and wants to genuinely make amends. Cartman is nice to Kyle to further his own agenda. Cartman is nice so Cartman can get what he wants.) So, Cartman puts on a sweater, and rings Kyle’s doorbell. Kyle informs him that a sweater does not mean you are a nice person. After deciding that being kind was too much of a hurdle, Cartman decides that his best option is to somehow make Butters disappear, just until after Kyle’s birthday. Cartman convinces Butters that there is a meteor heading for earth, and Butters should hide in a safe bunker, allowing Cartman to find Butter’s parents and others to come into the bunker. Cartman convinces Butters that he wants to keep Butters safe. Cartman leaves Butters in a local neighbor’s bomb shelter.
When the town realizes that Butters is missing, they turn to a panic, and Kyle’s mom postpones the trip to Casa Bonita. Because the town is searching for Butters, Cartman moves his location to a junk yard, and tells Butters that humanity is gone, and he should stay inside a old refrigerator for as long as possible, because mutants are taking over the cities.
Cartman did not give one iota of empathy to Butters. As a matter of fact, he left Butters in the refrigerator. Butters was found, just as Cartmas was arriving at Casa Bonita with Kyle for Kyle’s birthday. Cartman quickly rushes through all the fun things there are to partake in at Casa Bonita, being chased by police the entire time. Cartman gets his picture taken, runs through the cave, and even jumps off the mini-cliff himself. After being caught, Cartman showed no signs of remorse. He had accomplished everything he wanted too, and even though he put the entire town in a panic—not to mention he could have easily let Butters starve—he felt accomplished because he completed his goal. He went to Casa Bonita. He did not care what happened to Butters—not if he lived or died.
These are extreme examples of Cartman’s behavior. But if you turn the shock value knob down just 2-3 places, that is how Cartman behaves on a daily basis. All decision, thoughts, reactions and actions serve a one purpose and one purpose only. To give pleasure to Eric Cartman. He does things for himself, and only for himself, giving no thought to other people. Cartman does not fully respond to immoral behavior and thoughts in the same way that the average person would. In all actuality, Eric Cartman is an amoral, vile creature who can be described no other way than socio-psychopathic.
And this, is why we love him.
*All information regarding the brain has been gathered during independent research. Text include the American Journal of Science, APA.org, The Frontal Cortex, and other novels. I am not a scientist; in fact, I am nothing more than a 20-year old who is interested in how my own brain functions. Exploring this information through South Park was merely an enjoyable way of going about it. DO NOT consider any of this to be fact, true, or in any way researched beyond second-hand reading / insight. Please—don’t use this as citation for a psychology paper. That would just be stupid. **Further information on this subject can be found in “Proust was a Neuroscientist” by Jonah Lehrer, and of course the studies Lehrer references.
MmmmmMMmmmm Kyyles money! Nice job, very informative. Random choice of topic though, this was well written and well researched but you were obviously lost for a topic when writing this one. Don’t take it the wrong way, but these aren’t the kind of entries that are going to draw in an audience, though pleasurable to read, informative, and smooth flowing it felt more like a school assignment than TrueMuse’s awesome stories and thoughts.
BAHAHA good observation. It was a paper for school, i just havn’t posted anything in a while, and I was kind of proud of it so I put it up here. The next one will be more passionate, I promise.