Book/resource list for learning advanced adult Social Skills

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What are the best books teaching/explaining social skills for adults (especially females, preferably in English/European culture rather than North American/Australian)? I want to learn to fake NT, and I want to do it really well. I'd also like recommendations for books which cover things like how (and when) to apply make-up, how to dress, the normal structure of people's days, how to run a life in general.

I know all the basic stuff like showering every day and not subjecting people to monologues on dinosaurs. I want to learn the details - what facial expressions to wear during different parts of conversations, what to say in response to different categories of comments, how to behave when a third, or fourth, person enters the conversational group. And beyond all that, but that's the level I need to get properly competent in right now.

It would be good if this thread could become a reference bibliography for this sort of book. I'm interested in classes too, but they're usually limited geographically. Books aren't. But please, I would like to keep it relevant to adults/older teenagers (it's easy to find books for children/very young teenagers), and I would like it to cover the stuff females are expected to know. Men need much less.

Why would men need much less? Seems to me that men have a lot of expectations that could be very difficult from an Aspie standpoint.

And what is the difference between North American and European cultures?

Those are pretty broad generalizations, because there are areas where the expectations change dramatically in just my city.

As far as makeup, you can often get a free makeover at cosmetics counters, at least they used to have such things in my area of California. I would suggest that you not get too much into makeup if you don't enjoy it.

I enjoyed it a lot, when I was doing it, because it was fun to try out different colors, like creating art.

I'm looking forward to any results people post here. I don't have any sources on that. It's been too complex for me to grasp, the NT way. It makes no sense, it feels like a lie. I don't want to feel like a fake something, when I could be a real something else.

That's why I made it so broad - people don't publish books per-sector of a city, but they do occasionally get round to per continent. North America is bad because if I learn specifically how to behave like an American people will still think I'm weird. Then they'll act accordingly (see below.)


Expectations of men in social gatherings are lower. They are expected to have lower social skills and be crankier and can get away with more eccentricities. They are accommodated. Women are always discussing the strange things their husbands or brothers do, or where they did something socially unacceptable like turning up to a dinner in mismatched socks. They talk about this in a manner which indicates 'they can't be expected to do better, they're men, and they've been working all day so they're tired anyway'. Women who do similar dotty things are also talked about, but gather opprobrium, and the are shunned. They are expected both to try harder and to have further-ranging skills to start with.
That was too long an explanation for something that's fairly obvious and widely commented on.


That's why I need a book that focuses on Europe.


You are completely missing the point. (I'll explain more below.)


I think I can fake NT successfully. I can already seem NT for half an hour into any new acquaintance if I'm not stressed (but I lose track after that), and I can behave NT with my family for longer periods of time (which alternate with very AS time). The NT bits I've really learnt to do are not stressing; I don't need an recovery time. I want to learn more of them. It will help me be successful - there is a dimension in NT learning which involves the fact that there really are things you can only do, or can do very much more easily, by interacting with people and making them happy and doing some sort of emotional bond.
This is why high-power business people have meetings at lunch and at golf courses. Business deals don't get done rationally; they get done according to whether the representatives of companies like each other and can work out compromise deals. If I can learn to do this (not in business, that was just an example), I will be able to do so much more without being frustrated. Things like rules are fluid and bend according to the feelings the person enforcing them has towards you. It is the difference between people in the service industry being 'helpful' and 'unhelpful'. There is an entire social network of people doing what seem like entirely unnecessary things for each other, but it actually helps stuff get done.
Normal people feel like they have a support network around them, and they are happy when it is solid and unhappy when it is broken. Their support network helps them with everyday things (example: arranging a school trip) in some odd way that doesn't happen with Google. I didn't see any of this before, and now I do. (It wasn't exactly invisible; I just didn't see any benefit in it, and thought it was stupid and inefficient and generally didn't see the point - which is how I expect a lot of other people here will feel.) Now I want to learn how to use it.

.a

Last edited by pakled on 20 Jul 2008, 11:02 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, lumping Oz in with Yanks is going to cause some resentment down under...

First, find a book on Manners. I have one by Judith Martin, otherwise known as Miss Manners. Yeah, it's American, but much of the higher-end manners anywhere in the world is borrowed from Europe, anyway.

You think men don't talk about their wives and sweethearts (may they never meet..? Having 'bad manner's, or just being 'socially clueless' got me terminated from one job, so the consequences are not that different.

Hang tite, let me get one source.

http://www.succeedsocially.com/

I have come up with 4 books so far which should partially fit what I'm looking for - I haven't got any of these yet (and some are American and none target women):

Social Skills for Teenagers and Adults with AS - Nancy J Patrick (to be published 1/Sep/2008 )
Navigating the Social World - Jeanette McAfee (edit: this one is written for teachers, in the form 'tell the student how to do skills x, x, and x. So useless.)
The Asperger Social Guide: How to Relate to Anyone in any Social Situation as an Adult with Asperger's Syndrome - Genevieve Edmonds (has a very bad review on Amazon) (also The Asperger Love Guide - Genevieve Edmonds)
Social Skills Picture Book for High School and Beyond - Jed Baker

(I just got the google books links for those and the system won't let me post them till I have 5 posts and 5 days member time. I am annoyed. Last time I try to make finding things easier for anyone else on other people's webspace.)

Reviews? Additions, deletions?

Okay, whatever. I am European, and I would rather behave like one than pick up other habits from books. Let's just list anything, and people can sift through for their favourite cultures afterwards. I only tried to specify because everything ends up North American by default if I don't.

I think reading and posting on this site is a better course than reading a book, most of which were written by NT's without a clue. Here, you can learn from others what works and what doesn't.

I think better would be an NT-aspie collaboration. The problem with this forum is that a lot of people on it are clueless, i.e. the info is not reliable.

The book I want is pretty much the first one in the list above; I've just got to wait till September for it to be published.
Contents:
Introduction.
1. A Social World.
2. Friends and Family.
3. Health and Medical.
4. Living Arrangements.
5. Education, Training and Employment.
6. Adaptive Tools. My Journal. Glossary. References. Subject index. Author index.

And because it's new, everything else should be listed in its bibliography.

I don't think Canadians would particularly appreciate being lumped together with their southern neighbours either Or at least we try to convince ourselves we are unlike Americans while we greedily imbibe their cultural products.

As for claiming men need less social skills, I think you are missing part of the equation. Shy males are basically eunuchs in this culture. So if a male has Asperger's and social anxiety disorder, he is socially non-existent. It is arguably much easier for a woman to find a companion if she has debilitating shyness than vice versa.

It worries me slightly that some people use forums as a kind of 'personal' advice service. I like to think that, like any public advice area, you put forward a broad query that more or less fits your situation and leave it open-ended enough to give people a chance to post responses that would be interesting and helpful to as many people reading the forum as possible. I think your idea of getting together a collection of resources to help aspies learn those social skills we lack is fantastic, and I'm looking forward to seeing some titles posted. But I was a bit disappointed that you so readily dismissed anything that wouldn't assist in your very specific situation.

About American stuff: while alot of good things come out of the States, American culture seems good at foisting itself on other parts of the world, and self-help books are no exception. I can fully understand your aversion to American titles, but as someone else pointed out, alot of American social norms were brought over by the European immigrants who made the country. I would agree that there's alot of dross in the self-help market, and personally I stay clear of them: if your advice is so good, why aren't you handing it out for free? American culture is much more open to emotions and people are much more willing to air their problems and ask advice, and so others are more likely to offer it, whether free of charge, or for $9.99 in paperback. I don't know about continental Europe, but Brits don't like all this emotion flying around the place, and resent some (usually American) know-it-all selling them common sense dressed up as good advice.

(notice I accuse American culture of foisting itself on other cultures, not Americans in general. I'm a Brit who emigrated to California, and everyone I know here is great.

Perhaps it might be better, if there was the will amongst WP forum members, if someone could co-ordinate some kinds of research project about what skills Aspies would like to know about then compile some kind of resource from that. Yes, if you post and read the forums regularly, you'll get your question answered, but I think the OP was thinking of a one-stop shop where you can get all this sort of information. Maybe a sticky thread where people can post a subject heading, then someone could compile them and flesh out the bones, so to speak, with more info and advice, and maybe have a searchable site or something. Just an idea.

I agree with ignisfatuus about women finding it easier in social situations than men. At least for younger women, looks are extremely important, it's easier to stand out as a woman. Men don't have as many possibilities to enhace their appearance: more limited wardrobe, limited colours, limited hairstyles, etc. Nobody can tell if someme is shy just by looking at them, at least for the first impression. It's not clothes, figure, hair that convey the shyness (though you could arue that a girl in a sweater and long skirt is shier than one in a low-cut short dress), but how you act, the vibes you give off.

I wasn't doing that. I wanted people to specify what people the books were aimed at, and for someone to say 'aha! yes, I know a book written for clueless women!'. General questions usually get responses saying 'give an example'/'be more specific', and specific questions usually get broadened in the answers anyway. At the same time, I tried to keep it specific because I felt I was representing a group for whom a minority of the available books had been written, and that if I didn't point out their existence, they would be overlooked by default.


That is such rubbish. Women are expected to find it easier, so the expectations of them are higher, so when someone has very little social skill on an absolute measure, they stand out more and are looked down on more if they are female. Illustration: 'social skill' in average female = 8
social skill in average male = 5
social skill in female aspie = 2
social skill in male aspie = 1

social skill deficiency from norm in male aspie = 3
social skill deficiency from norm in female aspie = 6

amount of flak female aspie gets compared to male aspie = more.


That makes it easier. Less choice, more possibility for repetition. Men can have three suits and wear them in rotation. Girls (according to one rule) should not repeat any item of dress in a fortnight.

On women: that is to say, NT women generally find social skill easier than NT men. But aspie women do not necessarily find social skill correspondingly easier than aspie men. My general point is that there is a much bigger gap in social skill between aspie women and NT women than between aspie men and NT men. I think Simon Baron-Cohen might have done some work on this in conjunction with his 'extreme male brain' stuff.

I understand that what you're saying may be conventional wisdom to some extent, but it's not necessarily the case. I'm male, and I work in an environment where social expectations are relatively pretty low (half the people in my office walk around barefoot), and I constantly find myself in situations where I've gone against an unspoken, often unknown to me, social norm. I agree that expectations for men and women are not identical, but I don't think it's necessarily the case that men can get away with more than women can. They can just get away with *different* things than women can.

This is a good example of my point (many others, including those having nothing to do with romance/companionship, could be given).
I'm a walking example, by the way.