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Have you come back from a "first impression deficit"?

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Jayo
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06 Jun 2022, 6:21 pm

SharonB wrote:
Jayo wrote:
Except it's in the court of NT social norms, such as it is :roll:


Exactly that.

IMHO there typically isn't sufficient context.

Stranger shuns me: is it because of my high energy, is it because I'm not wearing make up, is it because I talked for over 30 second or under 5 seconds, is it because I look like their estranged sister, is it b/c I remind them of their partner who dumped them last week?

Customer service person is grumpy: is it b/c they don't like their job, is it b/c their parent went into the hospital this morning, is it b/c I said something "wrong"?

But even with context.... I don't see things the way an NT does ---- my NT husband can turn towards me at a festival and cross his arms and frown ----- um, obviously it's too loud and too bright and too crowded and of course I'd be upset by those things, but he's NT, so... umm... I'm looking around... thinking of what he's (or I have) said recently... nothing jumping out at me... it's supposed to be obvious? :twisted:

But to your point, I have a horrible social memory, so even for a friend it's hard for me to keep in mind what's going on in their life to have that context in mind.


Well, I think you just aptly described the caveats of the Fundamental Attribution Error :D
I find that those of us on the spectrum are less susceptible to falling for the FAE, since we think of a myriad possibilities like you have here, given someone's nonverbal communication... NTs will tend to think they're the cause, and let's face it: if the cause was something other than them, they probably wouldn't intuit it (neither would we, FTM). They'd probably think the person was exhibiting "weird" nonverbal signals since the environment and recent exchanges didn't warrant such expression.