Any studies on aspies with strong social skills?

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Does anyone know of any studies / surveys on auties/aspies who have found success in long term relationships, careers, and have strong performance in communication, cognitive empathy, and social skills? Basically all the abilities that are classically considered NT strengths, but can be learned and achieved in different ways by those on the spectrum.

There are so many studies on the minutiae of our supposes weaknesses and deficits. And these studies seem to feed a small industry of NT-created guides for social skills and behavior modification that misses the point of what aspie / autie minds actually need to find success. Talking about teens and adults here, although much of this applies to kids too.

It seems obvious to me that the place to look for what actually works for adolescents and adults is to study the strategies and resources actually used by successful aspies / auties. Locate a bunch of such subjects, collect data through interviews, questionnaires, other methods, maybe also let them write freely on their critical experiences and strategies. Then analyze the data for patterns, like common experiences they found critical to their development, common stages of social learning, and common tools and strategies that were found to work over these stages of learning (like personailty typing systems). Not to mention, include questions about the fallout from these strategies, as many strategies that can find success in social life, dating and the workplace can have costs to things like one's self identity and morals.

Has nobody in the research community thought of this? Or is there something out there along these lines I am not aware of?

The diagnostic criteria require social and communication difficulties, so research on anyone with high social skills and/or good communication wouldn't be called research on aspies, unless perhaps those skills are based on different processes than normal. I did once hear of research that suggested people on the autistic spectrum could reach good performance level through explicit reasoning, as indicated by slower response times in the initial social reasoning, but faster responses when asked to justify the inference. I have tried to find the original paper from the description, but failed.

The study you mentioned, that sounds like they've identified the population I'm talking about, where they have developed strong social performance through explicit reasoning. I'll have to see if I can find that. To develop strategies for aspie/autie social skills, we should be studying those folks, to see what's worked, what didn't work, what experiences they went through that helped them develop these skills, what books did they read, what subjects they've applied. And what they think is important as far as socializing with an autistic mind in a neurotypical world.

I did come across a study about "camouflaging" or "wearing a mask", that is in the ballpark what I had in mind:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1362361316671012

The researchers are trying a method to measure "camouflaging" and report on the results. They find something I've read about elsewhere, which is that women on the spectrum tend to camouflage more effectively, which may explain in full or in part the greater number of men diagnosed. That's another topic that could be studied in depth, and used to find out what strategies and circumstances tend to lead to good outcomes vs. bad. There are definitely dark sides to camouflaging (the study said that men in the study who camouflaged more were more depressed) but I know that good things can come out of it as well (women to camouflaged more were found to be able to read people better, maybe from access to more social experiences?).

So it looks like past studies have been able to identify populations on the spectrum who have developed strong social performance through explicit reasoning, and populations who have strong camouflaging skills. I think these populations would be great to study to analyze their actual social strategies, what's worked for them and what hasn't, and look at their outcomes and mental health, to try and understand what generally works from what generally doesn't work. And use those studies could feed into social skills programs. I've been gathering what I can on what programs are out there, and they all seem to focus on "correcting" theory of mind deficits and teaching social norms, both of which have all sorts of neurotypical biases in them. These tactics seem pretty useless and misguided to me, at least for adolescents and adults, where socializing gets much more complex. (if anyone knows of anything good for adolescents/adults, please let me know!)

My interest in the subject is because I consider myself one of these adults, an aspie who has developed strong social performance through reasoning. It took me about 20 years of actively working at it to make enough breakthroughs to consider myself "good", I'm still not great at small talk, but I understand small talk pretty deeply, and can play the game and hold my own in most situations. And I can manage social relationships of all sorts in my life, and communicate very well with neurotypicals, when I am not burnt out and a little time to prep. And I understand people and human nature really well, and am quick enough use that during conversations. I have a professional career and a good marriage.

I know my story, and what strategies have worked for me vs. what strategies have not worked, and have led me to hurt people and/or make decisions I regret. But I'm just one person, I wonder what common things have worked in general vs. not worked, for those who have developed effective strategies? I for one can vouch that I socialize differently than anyone else I've ever met, I draw from a lot of different sciences and a lot of resources, from psychology and therapy practices to game theory and evolution to pick-up artists. But I'm just one person, and lots of aspies/auties out there have found successful strategies to understand and socialize with neurotypicals. This seems to me like a treasure-trove of data about how to teach social skills to aspies/auties (also how NOT to teach them).

I've met diagnosed aspies with really good social skills. I don't know how they were diagnosed as aspies.

The question is, what level of success is enough.


Comparing those guides to my own experience, they are grossly inaccurate and deceitful.


One well known thing is the success of Pscychopaths in dating, career and public representation (they succeed in the said areas more than any NT). The funny thing is, Pscychopaths have almost no empathy at all.
And talking about the costs, the question is: do you really want (and can) to achieve success by becoming a cold ruthless manipulator who doesn't give a s**t about anyone and anything?

That's a good question, "success" would have to be defined in some measurable ways. Tricky but far from impossible I believe.



Not sure if you meant to agree or disagree, but this is exactly what I am saying (see my original post)! They all completely miss the mark. Part of what inspired this thought was my own experience, part is the difference between "mainstream" advice and what I see in WP forums, and part is reading books from aspies, in particular "A Field Guide to Earthlings" by Ian Ford. It seems like a massive waste of opportunity to spend time and resources on social skills programs that are useless at best, and psychologically destructive at their worst. Yet the tools and environments for the autistic mind to learn social skills don't need to be made from scratch, they're literally out there, just in different people's minds, and not assembled into anything coherent that could be broadly applied. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are too many variables, but has anyone tried?



There is a lot of middle ground between having weak people-management skills and having the ability to ruthlessly manipulate people, it's not a black-and-white, have-it-or-not thing. And more importantly, you can have strong people-management skills and choose not to use them for cold ruthless goals, even if you theoretically could.

If someone wants to understand NT habits and patterns better, I think that they should have the resources available to do that. Autistic folks don't suddenly lose their morals and affective empathy by learning strategies to operate in NT-land.

Could you give us some more detail about this?

Yup. I definitely agree on this.


This is not what I was talking about. My point is: the NTs keep on talking about importance of empathy and compassion and emotions (etc, etc) for your success in people-management skills. And then we see this example of tremendous success in people-management skills which is based on diametrically opposite principles. Not that I suggest anyone follow those principles (rather not), but it makes you ask questions if anything what the NTs say about people relations actually makes any sense, doesn't it?

@RetroGamer87, this is the answer to your question too.

Well the NTS need some way to make themselves feel better

Ah yeah I see what you mean. Asking the average NT about social relations (or even the average autism professional) gets you nothing but a bunch of chaff thrown (smugly) in your face!

That's why it bothers me so deeply that these are the folks writing and teaching this stuff. Aspies/auties should be writing this sort of guide, not them... they have no insight into what actually works, what's actually needed. They can't get their heads around their own illogical natural and selfishness and ignorance of their own nature, so the best they can muster is to teach their own versions of "appropriate" and "polite" behavior, in an attempt to get us to stop bothering other NTs. And yet what we actually need (I believe) is some honest insight into the complex games NTs are playing. But, you know, that would require some real vulnerability and introspection on their parts.

AHHHHHHH this stuff drives me nuts. Thanks for listening to my rant guys.

Also, RetroGamer... LOL You said it in many fewer words than I.

NTs can't explain what they do through pure intuition. It would be like asking Forrest Gump to explain the euclidean curve of a speeding ping pong ball. He can hit the ball every time but he predicts the curve through intuition, not conscious knowledge of physics and geometry.

And yet they still try to explain it. Usually in the most patronising way possible. They don't know how much they don't know.

A few books that I can recommend:

On Aggression, Konrad Lorenz
The Naked Ape, Desmond Morris
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini

These books aren't for autistics (and I don't agree to some conclusions of the authors), but they gave me much better understanding of those games.

The stereotype that autists have difficulty with collaboration is the result of a fundamentally different perspective on the purpose of social interaction. Good "aspie social skills" are quite different from good "neurotypical social skills".

In particular I believe that aspies can learn how to collaborate with other aspies, but only by learning from aspies and not by following NT advice. Furthermore aspies can teach aspies about strategies for interfacing with the NT world in a non condescending way, from a realistic perspective, acknowledging the amount of energy it can take to interact successfully, and including energy management strategies.

Even the word "social" is understood differently by aspies and neurotypicals:

The autistic understanding of “social”:

1. Naive assumption: “social” refers to 
interaction to learn from each other
2. Naive assumption: “social” refers to 
collaborating with others towards a shared goal
3 An autistic individual may take decades to decode the typical meaning of “social”

The prevalent neurotypical understanding of “social”

1. Unspoken assumption: “social” refers to negotiating social status and power gradients
2. Unspoken assumption: “social” refers to competing against each other using culturally defined rules
3. A typical individual may take decades to appreciate non-social interests

We (a small group of aspies/autists) have set up Aut Collab (https://autcollab.org/about/) as a platform for autistic collaboration and as a platform for sharing the results of autistic collaboration. If you are interested take a look.

I'd say, instinctively and culturally defined rules.

Hi folks,

A lot of interesting points and info, but to get back to the original post I would like to say a little about my experience as an Aspie with what NT'S would consider good communication skills (or what they really want to say and have said is you seem soooo normal).

Growing up as a small child I had an aspie style fascination with musicals. I watched them all the hours I was allowed and would have my wee routine of waking up and going through the video's one by one in the order I had arranged them and then if I was allowed repeat that only taking breaks for food, bath and bed.

No I say this because I really believe now that they were my learning tools for understanding emotions, interactions and just the world in general. I believe that the very fact that the actions of people in musicals is so over the top and clear that it taught me how to understand the world and the people in it.

For example take Annie (a musical about an orphan), it taught me about being alone, being different and friendships. Now these are things I am sure you are meant to take away from this movie, but I had to watch it thousands of times to the point I new each and every word, action, reaction to a given situation.

I would use these tools in real life, when I was at school I would try out these actions, reactions, sometimes with great success and sometimes not. The problem then however was that it wasn't real and so I might react appropriately in one instance and then inappropriately in another but from this I continued to learn and develop my skills.

I continued in acting for some years and was in plays and musical for a lot of my childhood, it was great at teaching me how to react, cos that is what acting is, reacting. I think for someone with Aspergers learning the craft of acting can allow you to communicate better in the NT world. However it is hard work and you have to really study people a lot.

I love movies now and have studied theatre film and television at university. Watching movies or should I say studying movies can teach you skills for NT interaction. I don't watch movies like NT's do but that's fine I still enjoy them but I watch them with a very different eye.

I guess really the point for me was it can feel good to come across as someone who is listening and is being understanding. If I didn't use the skills I have learned people might think I am neither of those things. So I put in the hard work to obtain the social inclusion reward (for want of a better word).

Unfortunately there are few NT's that have the ability to understand what it is like to have Aspergers and of course vice versa. we can only speculate with each other and try to explain best we can how we deal with a given situation.

However there are also so may other factors, my skill set came from a good base given that I am a decent singer and actor I suppose. I also have an above average IQ of 132, so that again allows me certain benefits over my aspie and nt peers.

There is no one shoe fits all but I do feel that movies such as musicals would be a great place to start for children on the spectrum. It's also fun too, which I think beats the NT option approach. There is also something cool about being in the thespian world, you are allowed to be a bit crazy so it gives you rom to breath and act odd and nobody cares or notices.

Ok I think I have went on enough for now. would be interested in your thoughts and if you made it to the end of that, fair play.

Not sure about other guys, but I always hated musicals. They're too unnatural and made up.