How good are you at picking ulterior motives?

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Maybe half a percent.
I used not to realize there were ulterior motives, so I would of course never pick up on anything - hidden meanings, hints, cons, anything.
It's not much better nowadays - I know there are ulterior motives, and I can assume that they are often present in one form or another, but I can never tell when they are present or what they are. So, despite knowing that they exist and may or may not be happening in a given moment, I still respond as if there are no ulterior motives. Obviously, knowing of their existence has not been of much help just yet.

I've found it's safer to assume everyone has ulterior motives. Some would call this paranoia, but I say a lesson learned hard is a lesson learned forever.

I don't pick up on it well at all, so I just assume that they have the worst intentions. It makes me seem like a jerk, but it's safer than being trusting.

I've gotten pretty good at it. I learned from experience, sadly. Oh well, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

I'm as trusting as a puppy :D no matter whom I'm talking to. :)

Motives of the ulterior kind topic

I am getting better. Take everything with a dash of skepticism. Always ask; take nothing for granted. I have worked with con artists and I could not see what they were doing to have my employment terminated. This is the last stumbling block I must work on.

Good luck to others.

Great topic, Greentea.

As a little kid, I'm told I was very trusting. By the time I was 12, I was pretty paranoid (this tells you a lot about my childhood), and I find it extremely difficult to really trust anyone apart from my parents - not that I think they're out to get me, but that I wouldn't tell them my real feelings.

There are times when I can see only the ulterior motives and can't see what the person is trying to look like their motives are.

Other times, it just goes right past me, I don't notice it.

What frightens me is how clueless about it I used to be. I had people I thought were friends, who really just wanted someone to laugh at, and I'd stick around because I never had friends before. Even after I knew to get away from them, I was unaware of how vicious they would become and continue to be, to the point of blatant lying and stuff.

I have trouble with that stuff, because I don't tend to operate on the level that people like that operate on, and so I don't see it, I can be simultaneously very perceptive and very naive.

My brother once told me that one person we knew, she had three levels of what she was doing. She had what she was really thinking. Then she had what she wanted you to think. Then she had her reasons for wanting you to think that, and the things that she was trying to manipulate you into doing. He also said that she thought the entire rest of the world operated that way too, so she would see hidden motives where they didn't even exist, and she never took anyone at her word because she lied so often herself.

Which seems to me to be an awful and paranoid way to have to live. And very isolated.

I can be very paranoid at times :D but normally I'm more trusting than anyone you'd ever meet. Which leads to my getting hurt on a regular basis. :S

What I want to know is how can we prove what we intuit? How do we know its right? after all, many people misunderstand us as aspies.

I have number intuition. I've never been wrong so far. But I guess "intuition" is not really a fair word, because I feel like it's more conscious than that.

I have more difficulty picking up on ulterior motives than most other people. People often say I'm naive in dealings with others, always taking what they say or do on face value not aware that they may be trying to manipulate me in some way. This is more of a problem with family members or people who I'd call friends. I'm more wary of strangers - especially when it involves money or people peddling things or beliefs.

I think I'm pretty good at figuring it out in cases where you can use logic to figure it out. I pick up on it when people say things that don't add up, and then I become suspicious and can figure out the deception. I think I'm possibly better at that than the average person.

But I'm very bad at seeing it when people do catty things for no real reason, other than just to amuse themselves at your expense or to make trouble. In that case, there is no logic to what they're doing, so it's very mysterious to me and I don't pick up on it.

My problem is that I try to use body language as my main indicator of intent. Adults are very good at keeping their faces from showing their true feelings... Unfortunately, this can backfire. If someone is trying to use 'social politeness' and I respond to their body language they get mad at me for not doing the right thing. It gets bad when someone doesn't like me, and I can see that by the way they are standing.