Are people on the spectrum capable of manipulation?

Post Reply New Topic

Yes, I've been wondering about NPD and how it relates to AS. There seem to be so many similarities, including what seem to be 'special interests' (but special interests based on things that give them narcissistic supply).

It's absolutely possible as aspie's often emulate NT behavior.

Are people on the spectrum capable of manipulation?

It depends. Once people start to recognize that while some traits may be less prevalent in different groups; they exist to different degrees and magnitudes.

I will end my comment with this: When people on the spectrum are good at something; they are really really really good at IT.


TheSunAlsoRises

I'm alright at it when I want to be and it depends on whom but I don't really like doing it because I hate how it feels to be manipulated. I think it really depends where you are on the spectrum and even if you were on a very lower functioning scale I'm thinking you could still be manipulative in certain ways maybe with your behaviour around the caregiver. If you think about it anyone can be manipulative in certain ways, heck babies can be manipulative with crying and tempers. It's a passive aggressive way to communicate basically.

I think in general it might be easier to manipulate aspies than your NT but again it's just a generalization on what is a broad spectrum.

Sometimes I catch myself manipulating people unconsciously - being passive-aggressive, exaggerating my problems, etc. to get someone to help me. I don't try to do it consciously, and I could never see it as a desirable thing that I might try to get better at. When I realize I'm doing it I stop. When I've had to try and manipulate people for a job it made me feel so dirty I quit the job.

Funny how someone mentioned saying "hello" is manipulative: it really feels like it, in the negative sense, to me! I hate it when random people say "hello" to me because I feel like they're trying to hijack my train of thought and demanding my attention (for a social interaction, which is almost never a good thing as far as I'm concerned).

it is impossible for me to understand the substance of regular human thought, and it is impossible for me to be ever capable of integration with people in a societal sense. i have no sense of "community" in any way.

despite this, i can see how people are very predictable. i can therefore "steer" them toward responses that i find acceptable. it is like people are toys which i thoroughly understand the mechanics of, but i fail to understand their subjective realities (which i did not believe existed when i was young).

Haha, a bit off topic but when I hear of manipulation I always think The Sims. In a way it helps you feel in control of people since you can't really do it in real life.

No, i'm not interested in people and avoid them, hence i would never bother to even try play such games that require contact and could possibly lead to entanglement.

when i was working in an office 9-5 and also addicted to a RTS game, an amusing cross pollination of thoughts occurred , and i felt i could click on people's heads, and then click on the floor in front of me and expect them to mindlessly follow my direction and come to me. they had no idea i thought in that fashion so i used to laugh on many occasions (where they were standing before me) that they could not understand.

It would actually be cool to be a master manipulator but then I start thinking of psychopaths, cults and evil leaders like Hitler.

I knew one who seemed to have both, but I don't know for sure. Special interests were comics, making clothes, and growing seeds from supermarket vegetables to produce more, "detoxified" seeds. Hard to see any narcissistic feed coming from that. She did once say she'd put me in charge of seed storage, but as she didn't follow up with any specific instructions, and never mentioned it again, I didn't pick up the task.....I wouldn't have minded doing it but I didn't get much free time in those days.

Biggest pointers to her narcissism I can recall were strong delusions of grandeur and persecution, very weak compassion, and eye-watering arrogance. She'd pick fights that she couldn't possibly win, writing reams of abusive rhetoric to authorities with no inkling that she would only look a fool in the eyes of bureaucrats. There's some evidence of manipulative behaviour in matters of the heart, but I didn't notice anything very effective about that either. It's possible she was doing a lot of left-handed stuff to get attention, but if so the results were usually short-lived. I did wonder how she managed to upset her ex quite severely by disregarding the emotional dimension of a couple of his presents to her......he was obviously attaching too much importance to objects, but as they'd been very close for many years, it was hard to see how she was still so unaware of his personality as to drop such a clanger. But, Aspies can go for decades and not know much about their partners.

Of course. I knew someone on the spectrum who always did that. There is different levels of manipulation. I know I did it in my childhood because it's something all kids do. Mom told me I was very good at it when I was a baby. There is normal manipulation and abnormal manipulation. Normal manipulation is something that is the norm and doesn't make them a sociopath or psychopath or a narcissistic. Then there is abnormal manipulation that psychopaths so or narcissistic or sociopaths or just something bad people do. People can manipulate but not be very good at it because it backfires or because people know what their intention is. Very good ones, people don't even know they are being manipulated by them until it's too late. I also suspect my ex who was aspie manipulated me. It took me years to realize it. Plus I have known some aspies online who were also capable of it too. One of them admitted she used to have tantrums in stores just so she would leave. That is a form of manipulation.

Plus not all manipulation is bad. Sometimes it's a good thing and not a bad thing. Sometimes you need to do it to protect yourself from a bad situation.

I'm sure it is possible for someone on the spectrum to manipulate/take advantage of others, just like it is possible for them to lie, steal or commit crimes.

Depends on the lack of TOM like others have said.

but IMO what a lot of people with AS lack is TOM in real-time, which l also lack.

Premeditated manipulation is a different story. l find people very predictable after knowing them for awhile, like others have said.

In the long run the Aspie may not be as effective as a very manipulative NT due to the slip ups/deficit in real time but not incapable IMO.

When I was younger, I was sometimes told that I was manipulative....but I never realized when I was being manipulative, so I always thought the label was unfair. During the times I was "manipulative," I was simply doing what I had to do to avoid a frightening situation.

Well spotted. It takes me a while to make emotional sense of interactions, but when I do, I sometimes think I know more about them than they know about themselves. With text messages one person said I had a way of looking into their soul. With instant messaging I still get a minute or two to think, and I've impressed people there too. Put me in realtime and it's a different story.

I've also read a few times that Aspies can somehow end up dominating their partners in relationships. I would think that would be very difficult for an Aspie to do deliberately, on account of the realtime context. So I don't know what that one's about, and tend to take it with a pinch of salt until I see a detailed blow-by-blow account of how this is supposed to operate. My own theory is that Aspies can become kind of supercharged when a relationship is beginning (just like most people can), and for a time they can perform better socially. They may think it's a permanent new strength they've acquired through finding the right person, but in reality it's draining them, and eventually the novelty wears off the relationship and they just can't keep up the high performance any more.....meanwhile the partner has become a victim of unintended entrapment.