Understanding what goes on in someone else's head

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I have a really hard time figuring out people's motivations and predicting actions because I can't get into someone else's head. I think this is where my social problems are mostly rooted. I know this is a common Aspie problem. Does anyone know how to do this?

It is a big problem that a lot of us have...difficulty with "theory of mind"...mine is absolutely deplorable...and in not being able to understand, I sometimes insert my own ideas/guesses as to what it might be and the result is often paranoia confusion and avoidance...and sometimes embarrassment...
When I was a teenager, I was somewhat extroverted and would keep talking to people not knowing that they actually saw me to be a complete goon and totally disliked me...I would continue to interract with them over and over again unable to read the cues that they had no interest in socializing with me.

These days I don't do that sort of thing....Now I have a really hard time communicating with people with whom I have never broken the ice...and I am afraid to talk to them because I just don't know what they think of me or where they are coming from...and so to these people I guess I seem standoffish...I have wound up with having all my female employees scared of me and thinking I hate them (according to what I have been told) because I have never been able to talk to them...because no conversation was ever initiated....so it can go both ways...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

Its near to impossible to know what people are thinking exactly however in my opinion if you get a good grasp of there background,there personality,there goals and any (im not sure the best way to phrase this as i dont want to cause offence so i hope i don't cause offence with this) mental problems . Knowing about the persons home life is important and often this information is kept private and can be hard to come by dont forget to get to know them well...and sometimes you just dont want to know whats going on in peoples head

I think there's degrees of difficulty with this. Some have more problems than others. Non-Aspies have trouble understanding us too. So, part of it is, just, most people think different than you. That is, the problem isn't a lack of ability, but rather, a lack of people who think like oneself.

My difficulties are in that realm. Like, I can put myself in the shoes of a hypothetical person who's like me, but not me. Like reading something I wrote as if I hadn't written it and thus catching ambiguous wording -- stuff I might misunderstand if I was the reader. But knowing how someone with a completely way of thinking from mine might take something I say or write, that I'm not so good at.

I think the part of it that's putting oneself in the shoes of someone who's like oneself, that can be dealt with on a logical level if it doesn't come automatically. Like, understanding that someone doesn't know everything I know, doesn't see what I see. But if someone has a whole different way of thinking, or a whole different value system, well, all the logic in the world ain't going to get us anywhere if we don't have information about how they think.

I think this is very true, and kind of puts the myth to the Theory of Mind concept. If everybody put their perceptions and decisions together by logical processes similar to mine, I would easily be able to predict what they might do in a given situation.

If my thought processes worked in a Neurotypical fashion, I would understand what's so (supposedly) damned fascinating about Survivor and Big Brother, and I'd probably know, or have a pretty good sense, when coworkers were plotting to get me fired.

Thank gods that's not the case, or I'd have to kill myself for being so petty and mundane.

hear hear!!^

I think I'm actually pretty good at reading people, and have used the ability to manipulate them from time to time.

The more you know about a person, the easier they are to predict and manipulate, so if you are looking for advice, the best I could give is to just talk to that person as much as possible and you'll get a pretty good idea as to how they think.