Research poll (please respond)

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This question might seem totally at odds with whats known of Aspies but...

How good are you (now) at 'reading' people, their intentions, motivations, honesty towards you or a situation?

And are you (now) any good at 'knowing' people, how they'll act/react or think?

I don't know for sure.

I know I can be good in a practice counseling session if that answers your question.

With respect to both questions, I dont really have the ability to tell. I can do some reasoning based on their tones, but its limited and often my interpretations are wrong. Your question isnt at odds with us, but its more along the lines of something a lot of us are unable to do, or comprehend . . . like the social interpretation part of our brain(s) just doesnt work, or has to be trained. Most of the time though, people have to "spell it out for us."

I have improved my skills in the area considerably, but there will always be screw ups. I find that people can be very predictable, but there is always an element of surprise.

To both, "I don't know on an absolute scale, I suspect still not very good, but a lot better than I used to be."

Probably not very good with most people. With people i'm close to, my parents or my sister, i have a pretty good idea of how they'll react to different things, though.

I think I am probably no better or worse than I was when I was a boy. I think that's because I tried to hide and cover so much that I never learned anything. I have never been TOO bad at recognizing others' emotions, but I'm terrible at sensing when others are lying to me or trying to trick me.

Last edited by dyingofpoetry on 05 Jun 2010, 8:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm pretty bad at it, but I can reliably tell simple emotions and in a few people I can understand more complex ones.

4yrs ago I had severely delayed ToM. I scored 47 on the AQ test with a 15 EQ.

Now with intense therapy and our own methods I am now scoring 27 AQ test and 57 EQ!! So I reckon I am doing okay for an autistic. But it did take me 52 yrs!!
I am told now I am probably on about 4th order ToM.

www.jelibean.com

poor, and poor.

you'd have to know what a "situation" is to even begin to think about how someone else might relate to it.

i do know how a few people i know very well might react to certain information. for ex, i can predict what my brother might find funny (but only insofar as our senses of humor overlap) or that my mother might overreact to or worry about something i tell her. but what the cause for concern is (does she think i'm incapable of handling something? does she feel responsible? does it remind her of something in her own life?) i haven't a clue. i just know it as a predictable response because of her pattern of behavior over a lifetime.

i sometimes can read a mood: someone is "down" compared to usual (sad? tired? ill? who knows) and i can sometimes read disappointment, but don't know if i've done anything to cause it.

motives? no idea. i have spent my whole life trying to surmise other people's motives. it was a massive relief to give up.

I think I'm okay at it but I don't really know objectively. If I think someone might be a jerk I won't interact with them enough to find out if they really are a jerk, so I never get a confirmation on my hypothesis. I often think people are jerks even when others insist that they are nice. It's really easy for me to find people annoying, even when I can't pin down what it is about them that bothers me. Lots of people make me uncomfortable for unknown reasons. Maybe I'm just too sensitive, "shy", introverted, whatever. On the other hand, when someone is 100% genuine and nice I can usually tell right away. Unfortunately those kinds of people are really rare, especially among NTs.


With the few people I do know well (family members) I can usually predict how they'll react to something, yet I don't really follow thier thought process. But on the same token they aren't really able to follow my thought process. We just annoy each other.

In real life outside of family I can't really say for sure. I don't interact with enough people IRL to know. On the internet though I find that people are pretty predictable. When I watch people debate I sometimes know exactly what argument a person is going to make based on thier personality.

I'm pretty good if I'm just observing the situation. Since I don't have to worry about how I should respond, I can put all of my intellect into understanding. But if I'm participating in the situation or the conversation, I'm fairly clueless.

very good, better then most NTs, I think. Although my reading is very context centric.

This.

As an observer I pick up on things. When actively participating I fail. Actively contributing to a conversation takes all the effort.

I still notice moods, body language, sarcasm, etc... but when it comes to knowing exactly what to say to have the right effect on someone I can't do it. I'm too focused on the topic itself, or on following whatever stream of consciousness / tangent my mind decides to follow. If something piques my interest, I tend to go off and ramble on about it, hoping that someone actually cares. It's a style that's almost universal with aspies. I'm not a very functional communicator. I'm more about broadcasting my thoughts and hoping that someone finds something in it.