How do you know if you are emotionally blind?

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I'm puzzled how one can tell if one is emotionally blind or not. I would assume that you cannot tell unless someone else tells you that you are. Is that correct? If you are color-blind, it's likely that you would not know it unless you take the test, or someone tells you that you are.

What I am really puzzled about is that emotions can easily be interpreted intellectually. Facial expressions for instance have specific patterns like you see in emoticons like this
What is the difference between recognizing letter 'A' and recognizing this facial pattern as "sad"? What more do you need to know to realize that someone is sad?

The same goes for sarcasm. Sarcasm is not just in tone. Even if you write it down, it's possible to recognize it as sarcasm. So, this too is an intellectual process. Even the tone of the voice when someone is sarcastic has a specific pattern, which can be learned like a melody of a song. I don't understand why anyone would need anything more to understand sarcasm. Could anyone explain?

Yeah, I'd like an explanation too. I truly think I DO perceive people's feelings well; probably too well, but sometimes I wonder. I haven't gotten a lot of feedback on this.

You are emotionally blind if you need an emotional guide dog.

Unfortunately, you don't get the good parking spaces.

If is frown; than what is concentration?

And if is crying, than what is sad beyond tears?

What does emotional blindness mean?

What I meant by "emotionally blind" is that you are unable to understand what other people are feeling. For instance, suppose you are talking about chemistry, a subject matter you are passionate about, to some of your friends. Suppose your friends are actually not interested in what you are saying, but you don't notice it. You cannot see that they are feeling bored of your monologue.

I suspect this is related to empathy. You and I can't feel what other people feel.
My ability to read emotions is a coping skill, which did not exist when I was young.
It is still limited though. I am sure an average NT feels much more. My little NT daughter keeps
describing personas in a book as angry, or sad or something else. My older asperger's girl writes excelent stories and gets the response back, that her characters express very few emotions.

This is a good question. I think that I read people just fine, but how do I know for sure? Most of the time, I function very well, but sometimes things go wrong for no apparent reason. To what do I attribute it? Is there an objective test to see if we read people well?

The only thing I've seen along those lines is this. I scored below average, and was pretty frustrated taking it because often my answer wasn't among the choices. It only has eyes, though. No mouth, no motion, no voice, no context. I probably do much better if I have all those clues.

hey domo arigato mr.roboto

Thank you, CrushedPentagon for that link.

Personally, I have no idea whether I have AS or not. I do have some of the symptoms. I just took the "Mind in the Eyes" test that you recommended. It's quite interesting. I did read in some article that adult Aspies have hard time with this test. I scored 29, which is quite good. It certainly was not easy. I really had to think about it.

Do you mean sort of like empathy?

I did not want to use the word "empathy" because it's quite different. Even if you are unable to perceive other people's emotions from certain cues, you would still be able to empathize with people as soon as you understand their predicaments conceptually. All you would have to do is to compare their experience with your own.

I've read that people with AS lack the spontaneous (real-time) ability to perceive certain emotional cues. They need to conceptually understand it before they can empathize. I'm just wondering how it's possible to tell whether you are perceiving the emotional cues or not.

That’s about mind blindness, I think it just the same as emotional blindness signals from facial expression?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-blindness

thats what wiki says about empathy:-

Empathy (from the Greek εμπάθεια, transliterated as empatheia, meaning "physical affection, partiality") is commonly defined as one's ability to recognize, perceive and feel directly the emotion of another. Since the states of mind, beliefs, and desires of others are intertwined with their emotions, one with empathy for another may often be able to more effectively define another's mode of thought and mood. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort of emotional resonance.

Anyone think this just happens between likeminded people?

I scored 20.

I scored 22


This might be interesting http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/s ... 225208.htm

So I decided as I was taking the test to just go with my gut instincts and write down the answer the occurred to me first. But as I was taking it though geez you know, I’m going to get half of these right, you know maybe I have some kind of autistic disorder here that I’ve never diagnosed before.

And then I got to the end of the test just having gone with my gut instincts and I got about 90% of them right. So it’s a very interesting test where you feel like you’re failing it because you can’t logically explain where the answer are coming from, but in fact you do get those answers right because they’re coming from a part of your brain that is literally beneath logic, it’s beneath the part of your brain that’s been affected by schooling, it’s part of your kind innate wiring and it’s very powerful

found this part interesting

Wonder if they is an introverted one of this... Only saying this coz it seems like extroverts go off freuds work & introverts go of carl jung


Anyone know about this Dr. Niles Crane on the popular television sitcom Frasier is a devoted Jungian psychiatrist, while his brother Dr. Frasier Crane is a Freudian psychiatrist.

makes sense with the difference of they characters

I don't know how much is learned from practice (rather thn implicit & innate)-it took long time to even realize other people were not like me (or vice versa). Understand emotions, but what I feel in a given situation isn't what another may feel in same circumstance/conditions. That seems universal to any human-rather than as some artificially categorized dichotomy between grouped individuals ("normal" people assuming they have same/shared perspective-contrasted with "different" people who admit we're all individuals with unique points of view that aren't interchangeable), in my opinion.
Once someone tells me some context, backstory, ingredients & preceding events-then I'm much more able to "get where they're coming from" & find similar, emotionally resonant experiences/perceptions within myself (with which I can relate to other person).
I'm dx'd AS, but I understand not all "emotional blind spots" are discernable with this quiz.

(Members only: "Eyes test online")-
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postxf4300-0-30.html
I don't put much stock in this test, esp. since it consists of static pictures/photos-unlike people's faces IRL, which are 3-dimensional & in motion. Some were easy to guess, sad/mad emotional states. Others were difficult & I was sure I'd done poorly, but I scored 33 out of 36. Bizarre. Huh...

Thanks for pointing that out, I'd never noticed (since I don't keep track of which school of thought is which, have read plenty about history of psychology but the concepts not the names are what I retain/learn from it)-I really enjoy that show & the dialogue of the brothers' characters.