what exactly is black and white thinking?

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l am a pretty black and white NT. l think it''s common among NTs too.

A lot of people who are narrow in their thinking actually try to embrace a more accepting view of many things and avoid "labeling" and anything else that might be discriminatory. l think some of them believe they're really becoming less black and white that way but usually they can still only process what they think is "right".

l dunno, l think there are a few different issues that lead to black and white thinking, one being an inability to see something from another person's perspective, which l also see quite frequently in NTs but is described as an autistic trait(lack of TOM).

For myself l would say that l don't lack TOM and the reason that my thinking can be so narrow is because l see hoe many things in llife are interrelated to each other. Even though l am aware of the gray area people see, l don't always like to acknowledge it because l like to reduce people and concepts down to their lowest common denominator.

Most of the types who truly can't see relations between seemingly unrelated things are more likely to to call someone who ignores the gray area ignorant, most of them later figure out how much more clearly defined an related most of the problems and other issues people have are through life experience, and then become more restricted in their thinking.

Lack of TOM really varies across WP IME and l would say that it isnt the only thing that contributes to narrow thinking here. l see more people with AS who are able to make connections between things and analyze new information pretty thoroughly.

Of course a person's mind is going to seem narrow when they are able to categorize and label so well but it usually takes a more open mind or at least a mind that is willing to see possibilities to make these connections in the first place.

i've always had this; my most recent slip-up was thinking "only girls could like Taylor Swift". Yep, I stepped in it big time when I laughed when a coworker told me his little brother (who has downs syndrome which I didn't know at the time) was a fan of hers. I only realized my mistake that he wasn't joking when a month later another coworker later said he was a big fan of Taylor's. This is just one example of many....

i brought this up to my brother when I was questioning what was wrong with me last summer and he said that he thinks that way too, and it's just something in our family; i'm the eldest of five. Now with our youngest sister diagnosed AS, I think it's just that we're all AS. Who knows about our parents...I'd bet my mother's father for sure is, her mother may have been.

For me it's a thing where I want people to be consistent, and often people refuse to be consistent or their "consistent" is not like my "consistent." Like I see people constantly making exception to their all or nothing rules and they always have excuses for why other people deserve those exceptions but I do not, or how those exceptions can't apply to me.

I used to think I didn't have this.
My wife helped me to see that I have it quite intensely, but in a way that I could not perceive.

I can be very open to a spectrum of ideas as long as they are theoretical. In practical details of my own life I am extremely black and white, with options running the gamut form 0 to 1... and this is sometimes a problem, especially when I don't see it because I mistake my conceptual models and thoughts for reality.

I have a single constant black-and-white belief. I can see shades of gray in many situations but this one thing always comes up.

The belief is that if I am not willing to sacrifice everything for something I must not really want it. I want something else more and therefore the thing I want less isn't really wanted at all.

I end up being extremely persistent and investing ridiculous amounts of time, energy, and resources into things even when it's not necessary just to prove to myself that I really want what I think I want. If I'm not willing to sell my legs for something than I don't want it so I need to cut sell my legs just to feel like I do.