AS-bad at recognizing facial expressions/body language?

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Bold one, when I do this people get annoyed by it. Which suggested they trust people too much.

I surprised myself by just how BADLY I did in those tests!! I thought I was doing really well

For the mind in the eyes test, my score was 24 when I took the test slowly, thinking about my answers, but when I went quickly, I found I drew a blank a lot and my score dropped to 15.

EDIT: Taking it a 3rd time, making sure I look at the eyes, and then looked at each choice, without taking a lot of time to think, I made an 11. I found I became distracted as I took it this way, however.

Obviously, where I concentrated I could perform normally, but if I did not, then I would often miss the expression. There were some expressions, however, that I didn't seem to have a problem catching, like the ones where the person was suspicious or doubtful.

I've always been able to read body language and facial expressions and all of that stuff. I even remember times in my childhood when somebody was upset and I recognised that they were upset just by looking at their body language and then feel concerned, and I weren't very old in these memories, perhaps even as young as 5 or 6.

I think I overestimate some body language, though, but this is due to paranoia, self-consciousness, pessimistic thinking, low self-esteem, zero confidence, and Social Phobia/Social Anxiety (and general anxiety disorder). Like if people are laughing or even just smiling or just in a noticeably good mood, I immediately think they are laughing at me or are acting jolly near me because they are taking the piss out of me or something, even though, rationally, they are not. I just have to tell myself that it's just me overthinking things and being too paranoid.

Sometimes I misread body language, but that's mostly because I am not looking. I don't normally look at people and so tend to miss out on what I could be finding out, but generally, if I am looking, I can recognise body language and facial expressions like NTs can.

But give me a test on reading facial expressions and/or body language and I will get a zero. But sometimes they say that these things come from instinct, and testing your own instinct is very difficult, so I don't see the point in doing written tests about these sorts of things. I'd probably do better more in a practical test on things like reading non-verbal social cues, not so much printed on a screen.

I also took the "mind in the eyes" test I got a score of 21..however I always thought I was good at reading body language and facial expressions. Just one score below the normal range..its just a fun test and not sure if it means anything.

I think I'm fairly good at reading obvious facial expressions, especially when they are overtly connected to whatever I'm discussing with someone, but the more subtle they get, the harder it is for me to tell what they say. Case in point, a couple weeks ago I was hanging out watching TV with my friend and her new (first) boyfriend, when her brother approached and started talking to him. Throughout the conversation, my friend kept flashing me these looks that I thought meant "I wish they'd hurry up so we can get back to watching our program" but which she told me the next day actually meant "I'm really nervous about my brother talking to my boyfriend, he's going to give me trouble for being with this guy later". Completely and utterly missed it. That concept never even crossed my mind. I find that same problem happening to me a lot when I watch things like Star Trek or other "higher levels of thinking" programs in which a larger portion of screen-time is taken up by the characters studying each other and their motives intently. Thirty-second to minute-long clips of their thoughtful expressions will pan by, and I'll know by the segment's duration that what they're thinking is important, but I can't figure out for the life of me what it is that they're supposed to be thinking! It can make watching things like that difficult sometimes.

For the "mind in the eyes" test, I found it to be inaccurate due to the multiple choice answers format.

For me with most of them, the answer I first came up with (if it wasn't just an "hmmm not sure") was not listed in the available answer choices. I then used my intellect to work out which one it must be, and did quite well.

I am pretty sure it doesn't work this way in the real world

http://empathy.herokuapp.com/

if you want to train on the "mind in eyes" pictures. but it gives you a % instead of score.

I did the mind in the eyes test. I thought i would have scored much higher. To me most of the faces had the same expression. Is this normal?

Body language doesn't even register in my brain. I didn't even know it existed before my diagnoses. Facial expressions are better for me, I can read the basics and sometimes some more abstract ones, but it's still a Work in progress.

I didn't know body language even existed until a couple weeks ago. I was partially drunk and watching the leaders do their speeches and I found it funny what they were doing with their arms, and that's when my mum pulled up this huge list of body language... that was a shock. I never thought much of what people do with their hands before that. Trying not to because it hurts my damn brain. I can see some things now but I have no idea what they mean.

I know the basic facial expressions on cartoons, but I can't see them on people so well. And that's the basic (sad, angry, happy), not the more complex ones. And I can't tell faked from real at all.

On the mind in the eyes I scored 12 but those were lucky guesses and memorizing from the last time I did it (e.g. that girl with eyebrows, the old man with the big fluffy ones).

I never knew nonverbal communication was so important and accounted for so much. Makes me wonder what the hell else I am missing

I don't have a problem reading body language or facial expressions or tone of voice. I can generally read people like a book, even as a child I don't remember having any difficulties with recognizing different social cues.

I can usually tell when someone is bored, even if they don't express it. Like once when I had a film on and my boyfriend came in and he sat and watched it but I could tell it wasn't his type of film, even though most films and TV programmes he would sit and watch. So that made it even more subtle, but I still knew he was getting bored. I could just kind of feel it, even though I was enjoying the film myself. I felt so affected by his emotion, that I said ''let's watch something else''. And we put on a film we both liked. Then a bit later my boyfriend said, ''I didn't think much to that first film you had on''. And I said, ''yeah, I noticed that, that was why I put on another film we both like.''

That's just one example. It probably doesn't explain much, as I have about 10 thousand more situations I can explain where I could naturally read a person's thoughts and feelings without needing to be told verbally. It really does feel natural to me.

I don't have that trait, even though I find it hard to make these faces as I have to move my brows consciously and also to make faces other than happy/sad/angry etc..