Nonverbal communication and bias against AS individuals

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I know that many of us have nonverbal communication difficulties. What I wasn't aware of until recently is what inpact that has on our lives. I have sees statistic that say that up to 90% of communication is nonverbal. So, what do you think it would be like if anyone went to a country that they didn't speak 90% of the language. To make it more realistic to our experince...what if the people in that country(and often yourself) were not even aware that you were unable to speak or understand their language.


I thikn all humans...AS or NT...probably fall at different places on their ability to decode NVC . I mean they teach classes on how to read it, so we are not the only ones who can't understand it all with out some training. Most of us can read very intense emotions of extream pain, anger or joy. The more extream the easier it gets. (Maybe why some of us like anima...the expressions are not only exagerated but often accompanied by a written sign....* astrix to show surprise or sweat to show fear.

Why do I think this is so important? Well, it is obvious to most of us that we are often misunderstood and even abused based on what others "think" they are reading or not reading in out NVC. They get angry when they think they are communicating with us(using NVC) and we just don't seem to care or be listening..they think we are rude or stuipid.

That is annoying and painful but it is worse when you become an adult and have to deal with these misunderstandings while trying to get and maintain employment. This isn't just a matter of "people don't like me" this is a matter of survival. I need to get the job to pay my rent. Society doesn't want to (and shouldn't have to) support me. I personally don't want to live below the poverty level when I am perfectly capable of being a good worker. With just a little assestance, I could be a much more productive member of society...not just shovel their dogs poo and change their disabled populations diapers. Noble work, but I have been doing it all my life and at 44, feel like it is time to contribute more. But how do I get my foot in the door if they are using their own understanding of NVC to make judgements about me? I see this as no different then a deaf person being assumed "stuipid" when they don't respond to a question that they can not hear.


There is a tredn in human services to teach NVC to people responsable for hiring. It is meant to fish out people who are being dishonest but it is catching us in the net. I don't have a solution for this because I just realized it but I would love to see some eventualy advocacy for fair treatment of persons with NVL difficulties, like they have for persons with other "differences". Since there are so many jobs that effect out ability to do social work(factory and farming have been replaced by "good communication skills and team work"). That puts us at an economic disadvantage that is unnecissary given many of our strengths.



Anywhooo, I just wanted to get some others thinking about how this has effected them and what me might be able to do about it. One thing I am considering is if I can learn some of it and I am providing a link for any one else interested.

http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/entries.htm#Entries

I'm not sure if all people on the spectrum are necessarily poor at receptive non-verbal communication/understanding.

When I don't have to talk, am not expected to follow or respond to verbal communication at all, I am actually very good at "reading" other people's non-verbal comm. It is language use which suppresses this ability in me.

So actually you could say that I have verbal communication problems; it takes up far too much of my mental processing capacity.

However will agree that my body language does seem "off"/misleading/forced. And it takes a lot of energy to achieve even that amount of responsiveness ( smiles, nods, looks, etc) which is considered socially correct. I would quite happily stare into space rather than look at anyone unless I feel comfortable with them and it is one to one, and even then I still stare past them into space a lot.

And even worse is when, as in the long distant past, I manage some super performance, success, am well received, but it had nothing to do with how I am/was feeling etc, and yes, for jobs this means I have caused puzzled/resentful disappointment in employers thrilled by my interview and confused by the strangely different person they find working for them. Or I get in a state drinking masses of coffee and eating endless chocolate bars to keep me going.

I gave up on job market about 10 years ago, after a govt job agency helped me, ( as part of increasing efforts to help people with mental health problems to find employment, because I had told them about what I thought was my depression and anxiety ), find a part-time job that would have been perfect, (as Information officer for the tiny regional office of a national mental health support organisation), if I hadn't found the regional director, the only person i had to work with directly, ( apart from calls from strangers for information and advice on the phone), intimidating/awkward. I was slow to pick stuff up because I didn't manage to ask him for help/explanations I needed, not in the way I needed it anyway.

Last edited by ouinon on 14 May 2008, 4:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.

We can compensate. I'm really good at the connotative meanings of words, and I have a big vocabulary... so I get meaning across in the language I use. The "big words" I use are in most people's recognition vocabs anyway--like most people know what "deluge" means, but would almost never use the word. Those are the words I can make use of, because they have very precise meanings. Sure, it makes me sound pedantic; but it gets the idea across, and more than once I have managed to actually influence people that way... Every once in a while, when I am angry enough, I am capable of a verbal attack which has literally left people speechless, probably partly because it is delivered in a very calm, low, clearly enunciated sort of voice. If I am angry and still in touch with my speech centers, I can be quite dangerous.

A lack of body language is less off-putting than odd body language, in my opinion. Sitting very still, using few gestures, makes you seem formal but not all that strange.

Thanks for the link Krex, I have tried understanding body language back in the 1970s, maybe now I will have a better degree of self awareness to work with the information than I did at 15 and 16 years old. I am 4 years older than you so I have dealt with the problems you mention of unemployment and under employment relating to being on the high end of the spectrum before we were recognized as such. I am fortunate to have landed a job that makes most of my deficits much less of a problem than they have been in the past. I hope you can find employment more suited to maximize your earnings because I have been where you are at. I was 38 when I found my current job and I managed to get in at the right time, obviously such opportunities don't always pop up for our convenience. Working at a lower end of the job market than you are actually capable of is frustrating and bad on the nerves balancing the monthly budget.

We don't have "non-verbal communication difficulties"; The mundies have "verbal communication difficulties".

They have difficulty expressing themselves in words and instead resort to pointlessly ambiguous screwings up of their faces and posture. Basically... it is best simply to refuse to cooperate with them until they submit to expressing themselves verbally.... and as I have told many mundanes: "If you have something to tell me then open your mouth and say it already, meatbag!"

The thing is that I don't believe that it used to be so important to have all these "people skills", so called, ( I say that because there is in fact the most widespread systematic abuse/neglect/misuse of employees etc, by management , which doesn't look very skilful to me).

In the old days most jobs just wanted you to do the job, unless it was in commerce, management, or diplomacy etc and in those social skills were the job! . Otherwise it was completely normal to have oddities, eccentrics, loners, silent types, awkward and shy types co-existing in work environments. Although I suppose they may have been teased , sometimes bullied for it, it wasn't part of the job description that they behave exactly like everybody else.

And work environments have become more and more demanding socially. For some reason the old clerical factory set up where people sat in long rows in front of typewriters and couldn't talk etc has been abolished. Where did this "new" style of working come from?

I just had the horrible thought that it is since women entered the work place during and after the second world war. Women wanted to be able to natter. Could this terrible idea have any truth in it? ! !

And the increasingly mixed-sex workplaces too... ... ... flirty/gossipy chit-chat exploded, and perhaps new codes for "working together"/teamwork also had to be created to integrate/coordinate/blend the two sexes etc... ...

Last edited by ouinon on 14 May 2008, 5:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think it came with the advent of technology... Now that technology handles a lot of the mundane work, human creativity is at a premium because that's the one thing computers can't do. It's true even at McDonald's--hiring a human being to put a burger together costs less than creating and maintaining a machine that does the same, because the task of matching up the ingredients is actually quite complex if you try to program it into a computer. And NT creativity is at a maximum in certain sorts of social groups (and at a minimum in others, granted). Also, work in general has become more team-based; projects larger, organizations larger; so that people must work together to get most jobs don. So work has come to involve more and more socializing.

How much does a group of men working together talk? How much does a group of women working together talk? And how much does a group of men and women talk?

I agree re, technology to an extent; computers now do a lot of the sustained detailed clerical solitary acountancy style jobs that AS excelled at, but I do think the entry of women into the workplace may have radically transformed the style of "relationships" there.

Last edited by ouinon on 14 May 2008, 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

People skills aren't as important as some might make them out to be; All you need is the ability to fake them once in a while. Aside from that, I've found the simple Aspergian superiority in terms of specialised fields will tend to make up for any issues others might have with our attitude. Who cares if we don't get on so well with others if we can get twice as much work done in half the time... and better?

Social intelligence, emotional IQ, these things can make or break a job applicant. You could have all the technical knowlewledge in the world, but if you can't be a team-player .... a lot of doors close.

Communication, ( obviously non-verbal ), in the animal kingdom is mostly and most significantly about mating behaviour, and between rival males over territory and females.

What if women entering the workplace in large numbers ( and mixed sex educational establishments) has caused the incidence of non-verbal communication in our society to go through the roof because it triggers more of these primeval animal behaviours?

A lot of employers care if their employees can get along with others. A lot of Aspies/HFA types do not have such specialized skills.

Yeah, I had no idea when I was younger that "building rapport" with an interviewer would override nearly every other skill, regardless of the job requirements. Even though I've always been good at the technical stuff, there are still others who are just as good or better and can do the non-verbal stuff too -- so no solace from the "genius geek" archetype.

I wonder what the rate of Asp/Autie underemployment is? It must be insane.

Most jobs, are also aquired through social networking, I've heard. I once got to observe that happening at a dinner, and it was kind of fascinating: the two people very much seemed to be "feeling each other out," just like on a date. "Are you like me? Am I like you?" seemed to be all that was going back-and-forth all evening. Skills and requirements would pop up every now and then, but didn't seem to be the bulk of it. It's something I never could have navigated (and I "pass" pretty well).

(if I'm observing I also seem to pick up tons, as others have mentioned; although not always on the "channel" of NVC that people want you to pick up on)

It's probably hard to overstate the importance of some (any) awareness and understanding of NVC disabilites(/differences?) when it comes to hiring. I suppose similar to some law enforcement training I've heard of for cops not to misinterpret autistics. How to accomplish that, though? Where to even start?
I guess this is an example of sort of thing the disabilty-rights movement is about? (which I admittedly don't know much about, at this point)

Well, that's an assumption. Let's be honest.

That's absolutely true, and I don't know where it got started, but there's an entire publishing industry subset now churning out self-help books for the corporate morons incapable of thinking for themselves, that encourage social skills over the skill set needed to perform the job. I've seen this happen to others and had it happen to me repeatedly - if you come in the door first thing and go straight to work, finish your required tasks, find other things that need doing and do them so that by the end of the day your work area is spotlessly shiny and organized top to bottom, and you've even gotten ahead on your daily work so that if you got sick for a week, nobody would have to take on extra responsibilities to take up the slack, you will still be fired, for:

1) Making your coworkers look like the lazy asses they are, by keeping busy while they were laughing and talking all day and yakking with their sweethearts and friends and spouses on the phone, and eating garbage food constantly. Does a professional workplace need to smell like microwave popcorn all the time?

2) Appearing insubordinate for working through a staff meeting, that was only called to remind everybody that there's been too much slacking off and "we" all need to focus more on "our" work.

3) Snobbishly declining to attend all the office parties and after-hours get-togethers because they cause anxiety attacks (that are invisible to coworkers due to your lack of facial expressions as you shut down and go silent from sensory overload).

4) Arguing the point that the new office arrangements and changes in job description to increase efficiency are unnecessary in your case, as your efficiency is already at 160% the office average, and getting upset that your desk will now be in the middle of room, to "draw you out of your comfort zones and integrate you more into the team."

And all this makes perfect sense, because your mindless sheep corporate prick of a boss read it in What Color is Your Pantychute, or The Seven Habits of Mildly Successful Idiots, or Think Your Way to the Riches of Narnia or whatever Idiot's Guide to Life their corporate superior picked up at last weekend's seminar with the newest guru consultant (CEO's butt buddy) who's being paid with the salaries of the last six workers who got fired, which now includes YOU.

Meanwhile, the shareholders can't understand why overall productivity is steadily falling off and tanking their stock prices...duh...

I hate Office Parties for the reasons stated, and also because on the rare occasions when I have gone and not been drunk enough to make out with a married receptionist instead of my date, I can't resist telling the obsequious suckass types to get off of the Bosses leg when I am sober. Drunk or sober, Office Parties suck. BTW, the first incident only happened once.