Are people on the spectrum capable of manipulation?

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Some people assign the most ludicrous social intelligence to small children, animals and sometimes even objects, when they're vexed. It's usually rationalisation..........demonise the source of annoyance to justify retaliation.

Animals: I know of one person who thought her cat occasionally left home purely to make her appreciate him more when he came back.

Objects: I know of a man with an anger management problem who was arrested for trying to beat up a cigarette machine which had taken his money but denied him his nicotine fix.

Children: Lewis Carroll parodied the demonisation of babies by their caregivers in "Pig and Pepper" from Alice In Wonderland:
Speak roughly to your little boy
And scold him when he sneezes
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases

This isn't to say that NT kids don't pick up some manipulative ways before long, or that AS kids don't soon begin to innocently copy what they see around them. I've been quite shocked at how "wise" kids as young as 8 or 9 can be.

...I'd like to add to my earlier post that even if I was "manipulative," everyone else around me was way more manipulative than me: teachers, my parents, therapists, etc...my parents manipulated me into trying new foods and allowing them both to remarry after their divorce, my therapist manipulated me into acting normal by rewarding me with Beanie Babies, etc. So, if I was at all manipulative (which I still don't believe I truly was) I was simply returning the favor.

I am just about incapable of manipulation. Even seeing the ridiculous social behavior that people use to get ahead in the world is an utter failure when I try to have a go at it. Probably because it's obvious that I try to hard to emulate it.

Hey, me too!

Yeah, my social manipulation is skewing people to my way of thinking using clever subtle words.
It's like you don't mean to be nasty about it, it's just something natural to you.
I used to have PDA really severe though and didn't used to talk to people.

TD I picked your post to reply to just because I thought it was interesting.

I want to explain to you how someone with AS can manipulate lacking ToM. I grew up with a NPD parent so I had a pretty good role model. When someone emotionally manipulates you over and over eventually you're going to pick up on their behavior patterns. There's no bond required, only observation. It becomes a game of 'p then q' where you force a person into a situation of your choosing. It's not about social skills, it's about logic. The other person does not even need to be aware of you to be manipulated. It's not a two way interaction, it's you doing something to somebody.

Can an aspie be malicious? Well when you grow up up with everyone at school hurting you emotionally then come home and get it even worse, you're immersed in it 24/7, you start seeing everyone as an object to be destroyed before it can hurt you. Especially when you have a parent who sees people as objects to be used. Autistic children are MUCH more likely to be abused. Is it any wonder some turn out to be malicious because they want to be like the parent how is never hurt emotionally and mimic their behavior? Even Hans Asperger described aspie children like this before autism was a word.

Said parent has mellowed out a lot with age (I'm older than you). I have mellowed out too. Actually, I've made a 180 degree turn but it took a long time. When I started meeting some genuinely kind people I started to realize that was the better way. Today social justice and fairness are very important to me, but I still have a sadistic streak when my sense of justice or fairness is violated. I just don't let it get to a dangerous level. I guess the other byproduct is that I can't form a bond with people and I probably will never be able to. Most aspies have had at least some friends, I haven't.

P.S. There is absolutely no doubt that I have AS.

I am constantly accused of manipulation, although I don't know how to in the general sense of the word. Ah, but what can you do?

I kinda thought AsPD when I saw your location

People tell me I'm like that a lot. I know what I want and I know how to get it, but then I get told no juts because of how I'm being.

It works easily with other people, just by doing or saying something, I can get something without having to ask. Sometimes I feel guilty about it though.

How much more likely are Aspie kids to be abused by the primary caregiver? I never saw a statistic on this but I would imagine it would be quite common.

Also, if those closest to the child normally behave badly in a particular area, then the child will see that bad behaviour as normal, simply because they've seen nothing else, and I would speculate that an Aspie could find it very hard to see that the abuse they give and the abuse they (used to) receive, are one and the same behaviour.


That figures. Until somebody has seen what better human interactions look and feel like, they're unlikely to guess the right behaviour. I also think it's easier to overwrite bad programs with better ones than it is to just erase them and leave a scary void in the coping strategies, and that some of the rewards of approaching an interpersonal problem in a mature way can happen fairly quickly.


Sounds like you learned to manage your anger enough to become relatively harmless. I never noticed much of a sadistic streak in me or my parents. There was a lot of acrimony but it's hard to imagine anybody was enjoying it. As far as I've been able to discover, my anger management problem is a fairly simple case of delayed learning about the middle ground between complete forbearance and over-reacting. It seems to be righting itself nicely. I don't know if it's any better than sadistic.....and I suspect you do yourself an injustice seeing yourself as having that, because I would have thought sadism wouldn't need a sense of the target having been unjust towards them.

Can you give an example of the kind of manipulative behaviour that was done to you?


I don't know whether I'd think to do this quickly if I were accused of manipulation, but I like to think I'd ask for details, if it was somebody important to me, get them to show me how this manipulation had happened. If they're bright enough to use such a big word, they shouldn't have a problem.

'Special Interest' anyone?

I have written about this numerous, times. I think to a great degree certain types of meltdowns are due to being able to reflect back upon a given situation and experiencing ToM. The appropriate reaction(often-times negative), which was missed real-time, is displayed later down the line.

I could elaborate BUT...

TheSunAlsoRises