mindblindness paradox

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"I don't understand. If NTs have such great mindreading abilities why do they misinterpret things so often? I'm not talking misinterpreting people with AS either, they misinterpret other NTs as well."

NTs mindread, overall, better than many of us do, but I don't think they're that great, either. According to this article (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles ... nd-reading), here's now well they actually do:

"Strangers (who are videotaped and later report their second-by-second thoughts and feelings, as well as their assessments of their counterpart's thoughts and feelings) read each other with an average accuracy rate of 20 percent. Close friends and married couples nudge that up to 35 percent. And "almost no one ever scores higher than 60 percent," reports psychologist William Ickes, the father of empathic accuracy, who is based at the University of Texas at Arlington."

Their accuracy might be this low because they use heuristics, and they have an egocentric bias, just like we do (http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscienc ... people.php).

NTs can mind-read this well with other NTs because their minds work roughly similarly. Yes, they're probably using projection, at least to some degree, although it's probably tuned to the behavior of other people they've met, and not just their own individual psychology. These automatic assumptions work OK for other NTs (if you consider <60% to be "OK"), but don't prepare them to deal with someone on the spectrum, IMO. Your thoughts?

makes sense. i think the concept of mindblindness, as used to explain disconnected communication between those with an ASD and others, is a bit short-sighted. i think it is as much to do with different wiring, and the fact we are also unreadable to others. so i balk at the diagnostic phrasing of "misreading social cues" because i think it's a lot more complicated than that, and the misunderstandings are far more pervasive. for example, i cannot feel my mother's emotion at all, and have time and again become angry with her because i think the emotion is not present, and can't understand why. it took 37 years to recognize this, and reconsider the content of our communication. when i spoke with her about this new awareness, she asked "are you able to feel that i love you?" and i had to answer no. it's terrible. that is so much more damaging than failing to recognize a joke. but where is it in the clinical research about ASDs and their effect on communication? if i can recognize sarcasm, but i cannot feel my mother's love for me, am i less impaired than anyone else? absolutely not. the impairment might be harder to see, but is equally (or more) acute.

being aware of it doesn't really help.

I'd still need to see proof that any given NT will be a better mindreader than any given person on the autism spectrum. I've seen plenty of NT's who were less accurate than I am. Perhaps they were all undiagnosed aspies, though I really doubt it.

I think I'm better at figuring out someone's intentions than the average person if there's a lack of logic to their actions that I can ferret out. For instance, if someone told me something at one time and then they come up with a different story the next time, I can tell that they are lying. Or if their actions don't make sense in a given context, I'm unlikely to be misled.

But when it comes to the subtleties, like knowing if someone wants to talk or wants me to go away, I'm very bad at figuring it out, unless they do something obvious. So I usually just assume they'd rather be left alone.

Maybe mind reading is something to do with shared communication style and shared experience?

Close family members can infer what I'm thinking and I can infer what they're thinking.
That's because we behave in similar ways and thus have a shared experience.

Also, I've noticed that I can read people much better and they can read me if they behave in a similar way to how I or family members behave.

Maybe so called NTs are surrounded by people that think and behave in similar ways to them, thus they can form extensive social networks relatively easily.

Perhaps it's hard to infer what people are thinking if their facial expressions don't match your own. I always wondered what an "eyebrow kilter" was all about. It baffled me because I saw it on TV, cartoons and on people's faces in public, but never at home. That kind of expression wasn't needed because we never had the need to behave that way.

I can read peoples basic emotions and facial expressions.
I have trouble reading subtleties because I didn't have experience with that kind of behaviour at home. Much in the same way that someone who's had limited experience of a culture might have difficulty understanding it.

I never wrinkled my nose to indicate jelously because I didn't know that I had to behave that way. It wasn't necessay for me to do it at home, so I had great difficulty understanding why people would be jelous and not just walk away from a situation.

Last edited by AmberEyes on 24 May 2010, 5:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

Also, what about the AS thinking style complimenting the NT one?

From what I've experienced, I think that two different points of view can inform each other, as long as both parties are comfortable, familar with each other and not stressed.

What would this be called?
Combined theory of mind?

Also, I think that understanding and misunderstanding can work both ways.

Are you mindblind when you know you are mindblind? Yes.
Are you mindblind if you know what mindblindness is? Yes.

You can still not "read" people's minds, wether you know or not.

I miss social cues and I'm not an apie. The trick is to instinctively recognise what the other person is feeling. It might have to do with faulty mirror neurons. Mirror neurons enable people to feel what the other person is feeling. For example watching a scary movie in which the protagonist opens a door. You feel the tension before the zombie appears due to the actors body language etc. Maybe it's a bad example. My point is that normals can feel what the other person is feeling on a subconscious level. I tend to miss cues. The other day, I was at my friends place and he talked and talked while 'herding'(?) me towards the door. When we got there he said 'bye' and I left. I guess that he was getting tired of me and wanted to get rid of me. I only realised this at the gate! A normal person would have picked up on the cues before my friend got bored of me and left. I didn't so I had to be herded(?) away lol

I agree. I can't relate to the things an extroverted NT would think about so it's hard to get into their mind. I'm hardly ever thinking about specific people, or even practical matters in general. My mind is usually off theorizing / philosophizing about something or another. I can't follow television soaps because no matter how hard I try I can't make myself care about the characters, it's like I don't have the attention span to figure out the plot.

Sometimes I feel the same way in social situations. It's really hard to make myself care a lot about what the other person might be thinking when my own thoughts are so much more engaging. I almost feel like I empathize better when the conversation is more serious / emotionally charged. It's during "light" "chit-chat" conversation that I have trouble participating / empathizing. In that case everything I say feels very scripted and fake. I feel like I don't contribute enough unless something that interests ME comes up. Then if nothing interesting to me comes up during the course of the conversation NTs are going to miss-perceive me as being shy / timid or otherwise completely uninterested in them.


I'm not sure I have this problem. It's weird. When I look at facial expressions or body language they way I figure them out is by imagining what I would feel if I imitated it. Yet most of them I hardly ever actually use myself. Most of the time I have a flat affect. I'm told I don't "project" enough. If I do use body language it doesn't feel real, it feels like acting. That's what makes it hard. Maybe it's mainly a fear / self-consciousness hurdle. I don't really know. It is weird that I can sometimes feel what something means even though I don't use it myself.

In any case, body language only gets you 1% of the way to truly being able to read other people's minds. You also have to understand how events and circumstances are affecting people and predict how their knowledge, beliefs, and intentions will be affected. To me this takes a lot more brain "processing power" than merely interpreting gestures.

I've had some well meaning extroverted people recommend that I "put myself forward" and "join in more". They can't seem to appreciate why I would be uncomfortable doing this or why the noisy, crowded environment would be too much.

Is their "failure to understand my point of view" a kind of "mind blindness"? I'm an introvert. I can deal with talking with one person at a time, but more than one can be overwhelming.

I try my best not to show boredom when people go on and on about soap operas.
I don't want to hurt other people's feelings.
I have theory of mind enough to understand that people enjoy watching soaps even though I am clueless to why they enjoy it.
I also keep my interests to myself and don't go on and on about them.
I do this not to offend people. I only talk about these things if I get a positive response.

I don't understand why people have to overcomplicate their lives by following a set of fictional characters and relationships. Surely real life is confusing, depressing and stressful enough?
That's why I don't understand the appeal of watching a character get drunk, gossip or behave "silly" on TV. That kind of behaviour can be watched for free in real life without a subscription fee.

Also, a lot of characters on those shows are shallow. They're just put there as plot devices to create drama by manipulating and scheming. I have no interest in having a "theory of mind" for them. I can't relate to sociopaths. I only relate to thoughtful, introspective characters.

I'd say so, but the extroverts outnumber the introverts so we're the ones with the problem, by definition.

i haven't read all the posts, but since I've been aware that I don't understand body language like others, I've sought out help trying to read common cues. it does help in some ways, but most of the time I'm still guessing or worse, over-analyzing things to the point of paralysis. so no, it doesn't go away, it just gets different.

I wonder about "mindblindness" and emotional intelligence.

I keep reading all kinds of texts that promote emotional awareness.
Yet, these texts seem to only be concerned with the extroverted "normal" emotions.
Relating to someone with a different social, emotional and perceptual outlook isn't mentioned once. According to these texts, everyone with no exceptions, communicates 97% of their message through body language. I only have to take a walk down the street to see that not everyone's like this. Yet, these texts are making the dangerous assumption that everyone does things the same way and has the same way of expressing emotions.

Would it be fair to say that these assumptions are a kind of emotional "mindblindness"?

Also, I think that many people are made to believe that they are somehow "inadequate" or "emotionally deficient" because they don't behave in an extrovert manner or react in the way that the books recommend.

When I was younger, they sat us in front of a presentation giving video at school.
I felt uncomfortable as I watched people being forced up onto a stage for their "personal development". Clearly, some people should never have been forced up onto a stage. It was like watching a horror film depicting social and emotional torture. One man bowed his head because he was so petrified of being "put on the spot". The woman told him to look up and be more dynamic. She was cheery and seemed oblivious to the man's quiet and reserved personality.

I can understand how someone can lose social confidence.

But, I don't really understand how someone can "lack" a personality trait that s/he wasn't born with.


Is that another kind of mindblindness.

The idea of mind blindness is never something I've agreed with. Yes I suck at correctly interpreting other people's feelings and facial expressions yet am hypersensitive to some of them, however I think NT folks highly overrate their skills in this area. Nobody, not anyone NT or ASD ever truly knows what's in someone else's mind or heart. If they did people wouldn't need all the marriage counselors, mediators, all those self help books/popular magazine crap that tells them how to know what he/she is "really" saying, ......

Yeah, mind-blindness is a bit of a misnomer. The name makes it sound like those who don't have mind-blindness can see into others' minds, or can see what's in their minds.

I do often have difficulties understanding others. I'd say, yes, I have a degree of this something that's miss-called mind-blindness. But I do sometimes have the ability to understand others.

Yes, there's projection. That's something that helps me be a good writer. I can read what I write from the reader's perspective, and then edit it to make it better. But, when I do that, I'm writing for a reader who's just like me. Which usually works okay, but not always.

There's something more, though. I'm thinking of a friend of mind who is the one person I most understand. It's more than projection, because I can understand him even in his differences from me. It's something intuitive. Like, I get what kind of person he is, how he thinks, and can apply that. And not on a conscious level, not logicking things out (yes, I just made "logic" into a verb ), but knowing because something in my brain that I'm not conscious of understands him and works out his perspective, based on that.