How good are you at picking ulterior motives?

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Well, hello Rorschach from The Watchman. I highly encourage you to read a NT actor experience channeling this; http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/08/21/is ... thinks-so/

Now one thing that you do that I difer... if people treated YOU the way that you treat them, judging them based on the outside... is that exactly what AS people have relationship problems about? Don't you see that your own outside behavior does not reflect your inner integrity?

Good point. I certainly realize that the world is gray, however, for me, the AS experience is an inability to see the nuances and needing a way to compensate. In terms of judging people by there actions, I misspoke. I meant it more in regards to interpreting people's opinion/motives. But even that isn't quite right. I can't help but judge people but I try to make these impressions as malleable as possible to allow for new data and limit the judgment's influence on my decision making process. While you can't judge a book by it's cover, people aren't as open to being read, so you have to start somewhere.


Some validity to this. If someone is telling me they like me while they are beating me up, what should I believe?

The real problem is that I have no real way to know what someone's motivations are so I have to find a way to deal with that missing knowledge. Instead of outwardly mistrusting everyone, I often act as if I completely believe them until that assumption could potentially harm me or I have a reason to think otherwise. It might be unfair, but it's the most just policy I can think of.


Yes. But to my knowledge, most people I know are NT's and I assume can handle this stuff without some convoluted strategy. Plus, I think this would be fair to myself, though I don't have enough self-awareness to know what kind of image I portray.

I am very good at seeing the motives of people. I always know if someone is up to something nefarious.

I suppose I needed to know that as a child because my parents never really watched out for me. I had to take care of myself.

So i learned quickly.

Specter, your comment really struck me. I think this is exactly why I am continually shocked when people's ulterior motives are revealed. Time and time again I have been shocked that other people even have ulterior motives, and I'm always very frustrated when it happens - mainly becasue it reminds me that I don't seem to be able to learn. Every time is like the first. I'm now thinking that the root of the problem is not my ability to learn to spot ulterior motives, but my inability to even consider people might be thinking one thing and saying another, because that's something I can't do without a huge amount of concentrated effort. Hmmmmmm. Food for thought.

Frankly, I think I'm pretty good at it, but a lot of it comes from painful experience.

1. Most people have an agenda and are willing to lie to get what they want. So, I start from the mindset that most people may be nice to me because they want something.

2. While I might not be quick off the block about if someone is using me (thanks to AS), this issue is not a problem if I observe a manipulator operating on someone else as compared to doing it directly in my face.

3. Once I know someone IS a manipulator, I pretty much question everything they say and do.

Of course, it's an easy deal for me since I trust so few people and figure if someone is being nice to me for no reason at all...they must want something. If I naturally had lots of friends, this wouldn't be so black and white for me.

I usually take people at face value and believe what they say. I do pick up when someone does something that contradicts what they say are their core values, but attribute this to a combination of them not thinking, and only being human.

However I've found that some of the time they do things knowingly, with only their own interest or egos in mind and couldn't care any less about others as long as it furthers how they feel about themselves and makes them more successful.

Yet people act like theirs a problem with me. blah.

This is what happened to me too. Once I learned that everyone does this, it was easy to figure out what the ulterior motive may be in each case. What took me a lifetime was to discover that they have ulterior motives at all. This is called lacking Theory of Mind and it's one of the few core symptoms of autism/AS.

I agree. I believe most people who go astray do so out of laziness and stupidity, not wickedness. Most people are too stupid to be truly evil.

ruveyn

Greentea, I'm not that good at being able to pick up on underlying motives or notions of other people which, at times has lead me into many an embarrasing scenario or possibly creating a major misunderstanding and all.Still, I do try my best though for, I'd not wish to wind up being dragged around and lied to or worse...


ProfessorX

but I did quite well on the "recognising emotions in peoples face" (or whatever it's called) test. Is that different from Theory of Mind?

Theory of Mind is a generalized grasp of what people in general are like, what makes them tick, what makes them anxious, what makes them insecure, what confuses them, how they react when they're confused, what their deep, intimate fears, embarrassments, desires and hopes are, how they react to specific actions, etc. etc. It is generalized, that's why it's a THEORY of how the mind works. NTs are born with a capacity to acquire Theory of Mind intuitively, and they indeed acquire it at age 3-4. Autistics never acquire it and need to learn along life through trial and error, intellectually. People don't expect you to read their body language so much as they expect you to intuitively "know" how to relate to them based on your intuitive knowledge of people in general.