Aspergers and Popularity in childhood and adolescence.

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High school, yes.

All other times, no.

Perhaps there are different strategies of socialising.


Active Socialising
The people who are “popular” in the traditional sense approach people and recruit new members into their clique. They also recruit “hench-people” to do any future recruiting for them.

The popular people concentrate on maintaining the hierarchy within the clique. They throw parties, give gifts and reward those who stay within the clique and follow the unwritten “rules”.

Using these methods leaders try to make all group members feel privileged to be part of the “exclusive club”.

The leader identifies a “scapegoat” to remind members of the clique what a “non-member” looks like. Identifying a common enemy seems to strengthen relationships within the group and reinforces the group’s identity. This is how lots of bullying occurs.


Passive Socialising
I wait to be invited into a clique usually as a guest because I cannot initiate informal conversation.

I try and build up as big a “grapevine” network as possible by letting as many people befriend me as possible regardless of their social status, difficulties or disabilities. You could call this “social naivety". This “social obliviousness” is an advantage because I get access to a large cross section of knowledge and experience in the population. This can come in useful when I’m in trouble and need help.

I achieve popularity and respect by offering others practical advice/help and being kind/polite to people. I view people as unique individuals.

However, I find it difficult to cooperate with others in a clique like setting. I’m like a free agent. I don’t like other people telling me what to do, but can lead and organise a group well. I like to feel that I’m in control as an individual.


I’m no an expert at sociology, I’m just writing from my anecdotal experiences. I’ve made up the terms active and passive socialising to try and explain what I’ve observed in social environments I’ve been in, but please correct me if there are better terms. I believe that I’m at one extreme end of the socialising scale and that traditionally “popular people” are at the other end.

Other people might use a mixture of active and passive socialising and could be in the middle of the scale. Perhaps “henchpeople” and “go-betweens” are in the middle of this sliding scale?


I was always told:
“Be nice to your friends. Treat your friends as you’d want to be treated.”

Perhaps “normal” people define friends as:
“Those people within my social circle who I like and who treat me well.”

I define friends as:
“People I can trust and who are honest regardless of social status. People who are genuinely nice to me and not manipulative.”

Perhaps my definition of what constitutes a good friend is broader and looser than most other people’s definitions?

AmberEyes: Well put! I am totally with you. I am also an example of "passive socializing", and my definition of friendship is the same as yours. I have experienced success with this in my adult life...(and being good in a job/special interest/creative field can help too, I´ve come to discover).

In school I basically felt like this: ISOLATED....I even had what others perceive as 'friends'.....but in spite of this I was ISOLATED by MY OWN THOUGHT PROCESSES. It was like I was a prisoner of my own thinking. Does that make sense? I was a VERY intense THINKER. I actually think I THOUGHT too much.....but as far as being POPULAR....no, I was never elected Prom Queen. My homeroom elected me student council representative....and it was a farce...all year I read the minutes....and I NEVER KNEW WHEN THE MEETINGS WERE, AND NEVER ATTENTED A SINGLE STUDENT COUNCIL MEETING. Why they elected ME I DO NOT KNOW. On the one hand I was proud....but what did I have to be proud of I was so disorganized socially I couldn't pay attention to when the council met? I probably had a reputation for being a 'smart' kid.....and was in the high achievement tracks....but in JRHIGH AND HIGHSCHOOL every minute I was there. I barely said anything in school.....I wasn't MOTIVATED to socialize with cliques. I thought cliques were disgusting. I had a best friend now and then....but really WHAT DOES THAT MEAN........best friend.....how far does that go.....I knew how to dance, so I became a pom pom girl....but apart from helping choreograph dances and performing....I was not close to ANY of those girls.....when they socialized I WAS ON THE OUTSIDE.....ALWAYS......ALWAYS....ALWAYS.....one time I tried to talk to one of them on a personal level during a football game....and she laughed at me and told me I was 'funny'.....I was NOT trying to be funny....I was trying to describe something real to me, that had happened. I must have sounded like an idiot...but how would I know....I was just trying to do my best. I got good grades....In college I was a 4.0 student. But I only socialized when we had to do group projects, that's all. I feel like I was a loner in school.....but I DO NOT KNOW HOW OTHERS VIEWED ME. I was out of the social loop and DID NOT UNDERSTAND VERY MUCH because I didn't interact enough to know what was going on socially in school. My grades were better in college than in jrhigh and highschool for THIS REASON: all the crap related to social idiocies was not dominating my experience, like it did in earlier years.

Could this difference in how friendship is defined be something to do with a difference in how traditionally "popular" people perceive the world? I speculate:


Traditionally "Popular People"

Foreground: Narrow focus on people/relationships

Background: Broad focus on details in the physical environment


Myself

Foreground: Narrow focus on details in the physical environment

Background: Broad focus on people/relationships


I remember reading somewhere about diffused consciousness being a Jungian "feminine mode" of cognition and focussed consciousness being the "masculine mode".

I wonder if traditionally "popular" people have a diffused "feminine mode" of consciousness and are able to take in a more panoramic view of the physical environment than I am?

I also wonder if I have a kind of focussed consciousness that zooms in on details in the physical environment at the expense of having very close, cliquish, emotionally charged relationships?


Perhaps the phrase "Treat others how you'd want to be treated." would be better phrased:

"Treat the other person as deemed socially and culturally appropriate. Respect the other person's customs, interests and beliefs even if they conflict with your own. Be friendly and not domineering. Don't hog the discussion: focus on the other person and what s/he has to say."

I've treated others as I've wanted to be treated (giving long impromptu informative lectures) because I enjoy the topics and being lectured to myself, I automatically assumed that I was treating the other person "as I'd want to be treated". I used to get into a lot of trouble for making this simple mistake. I now know a little better after much trial and error, but still have some difficulty with these kind of social skills. I'm a lot better than I used to be.

Oh yes, I´ve done that too! That´s one of the tricky things, is figuring out how people want to be treated. I´m beginning to think that when a group of people is more similar; "of like mind", so to speak, it´s much easier to have a theory of mind about the other person. But when you´re one of the "different" ones, you have to struggle more to understand the other person.

Yes, back in my monologue days, I thought the topics were so fascinating, I couldn´t understand why anyone would not want to talk about that. And I still find myself doing that sometimes, though I´m much more aware of it now.

I think the saying should be:
"Treat others how they'd want to be treated."

That's if you can figure it out!

One of the methods I used for working out what people wanted at High School was by observing their behaviour.
I think that this was kind of like my "Virtual PC" brain software for dealing with social interactions.
I reason things through on an intellectual level and observe the social situation from a distance.

For example, I could be sitting on the end of a lunch table (I rarely ever sat in the middle) and would observe things occurring. A dialogue in my head would be saying something like:

"There's John. I know that's John because I overheard his friends calling him John and the teachers calling him John. His face matches the mental photograph I took of him about 2 weeks ago: all the details of the facial features match therefore it must be John. I observe that John always buys scrambled eggs from the cafeteria when they're available. John always smiles when he eats scrambled eggs and even tries to bribe scrambled eggs from other people. Therefore I conclude that John loves eating scrambled eggs. When John sits down I notice that he always sits with the same group of people on table 3. Those people must be John's friends because they smile and laugh (jn a non threatening way) when they talk to him. I overhear that John is swearing about his Maths homework and saying that he doesn't understand it. I remember that John is in my Math's group and therefore is doing the same level of Math's work than I am. I note that every Tuesday, the cafeteria always has scrambled eggs as a compulsory dish. I have a problem: I hate scrambled eggs. I can also proficiently do the Maths problems that John is struggling with.

So, the next Tuesday, I sit myself on the end of table 3 and try to look as lonely and lost as possible. I wait. One of the girls in John's friendship group asks me if I'm alright. I say I'm feeling okay, but I'm not too keen on the scrambled eggs, but I feel guilty about letting good food go to waste. The girl smiles and calls out to John. At John's request, I decant my scrambled eggs onto his plate. John begins to complain about his Maths homework again. When there's a lull in the proceedings and John's stopped talking I abruptly something like: 'What you do is...' and say the method for solving the Maths problem. People in John's friendship group gape and John begs me to show him, so I get out a piece of paper and tell John about the method including diagrams where necessary. John is overjoyed. Every Tuesday, I sit on the end of table 3 and wait patiently for John's group of friends because I know that John will eat my scrambled eggs in exchange for me giving him pointers on his Maths homework. I've entered into a sort of 'knowledge and scrambled egg exchange' social contract with John."


If I'd been in John's friendship group and could have read all of the subtle social signals John was communicating I probably would have said something like:

"Hi John. You going to the match tonight? How was your weekend? Arrgh! I hate Maths. Maths is [insert expletive here]...Yeah see you later John. Might see you in Maths. I haven't done that Maths assignment either. I couldn't be bothered...It's too [insert expletive here] hard. Nah I was at Tom's house yesterday yeah...course I didn't do it..."


It seems like my method for social interaction is like metaphorically "going all round the houses just to get next door".
John and his friends methods seem more direct.

Also, it seems that in order to get me to interact with anyone, someone usually has to initiate the conversation for me first to get something out of me.
I like to think of the analogy of me being like a malfunctioning vending machine. Sometimes after someone inserts the money they have to give the machine a good tap or kick before it produces the goods. People initiating for me is like them trying to get my "social machine" started and "booted up".

I used to enter into all kinds of social contracts with people.
My knowledge in exchange for their services or goods lol
Sometimes these services even included friendship.
I also encouraged others to swap computer game cheats/hints with me in exchange for my giving them hints with their Maths/Science homework.

I now see that socialising is all about entering into mutual contracts with other people.

Last edited by AmberEyes on 12 Jan 2009, 2:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Oh you gotta be kidding.

I spend all the time in the library, i think i read the entire room itself.

I was only accepted, only, only accepted and treated as equals by the street gangs
and secret societies in my town.

And people wonder why am i so affiliated with them.

I'm not kidding.

The High School environment I was very accepting of others and there were clear written rules and anti-bulling codes on how other people should be treated.

The school was very small, friendly and understanding.

Sadly not all schools are like this though.

There are lonely people in schools out there who are like 'goldmines' of information.
These lonely people are potentially loyal friends too.
I don't understand why others sometimes feel the need to exclude or bully other people like that so badly.
Some kids could be potential mentors or great friends.
It seems that some people are just blind to the idea that these kids could help the school community as a whole.

I had times of it among certain circles - either because there was a high number of weird people with which to surround myself and we became in a way respected and left alone, because I'd help people with their work and/or make them look good if they were nice to me, or just because I was notorious for being a troublemaker with the authorities, and enough people had respect for what I did when I stirred things up.

That being said, I had times where I was everyone's buttmonkey, and it was basically sanctioned by the powers-that-were that I be as such. Sometimes I worked my way out of it, other times I just had to get out of there as soon as I could to avoid further problems.

Not in a thousand years was I "popular" or "respected" I was bullied and abused.

I wasn't popular in primary school at all. I only had a few friends and I don't think many people liked me at all but I don't care because that was a very long time ago for me.

At High School I often felt and found myself alone even though I was respected.
I did feel lonely at times and a little isolated.

When I observed everyone else and their social interactions it was like a dynamic system of interconnected nodes.

I viewed cliques as being like "molecules" of people. The "molecules" reacted with each other sometimes fusing, other times splitting apart. There were small and large "molecules" of people. There were also atoms (single people) that drifted around too.

The whole thing was like a giant self-regulating molecular web.
I was one of the lone "atoms" drifting around aware of the whole structure and interacting with it occasionally.

Not as much as I would have liked... all this popularity stuff is just a positive energy flow of matter. Expand your boundaries, and search for ways to feel safe without the need for popularity. I suggest meditation.

Well that's what I say anyway... I rather like the idea of materialism... sorta meaning that everything in the world is physical matter.

I was definitely not popular, but strangely enough I was respected. I can pretty much credit my best friend for saving me from myself a million times in school, and convincing everyone else that my odd behavior was due to me being some kind of genius. She was actually very popular, but also very shy, and apparently found nothing odd about me needing to be the one in charge of everything we did (in retrospect, some of what I did to her and told her to do was downright abusive, and I regret that now, but it makes me all the more impressed with her as a person for recognizing that I was not a bad person because of it). Middle school was basically hell for me because she went to another school, but in high school we were together again, and she carried so much social clout by that point that she convinced people that not only was I really smart, but my tendency to ignore anyone and anything uninteresting was not weirdness but independence and rebellion. Very few people wanted to interact with me and I was never included in any kind of social event (what few I did were a disaster, so I don't blame them), but most people treated me with respect and left me alone both in and out of school. We're still friends, and to this day I wonder how she sees that kind of person in me when practically no one else does (that's the thing - she didn't just tell people I was "smart" and "independent", she really believed it), and what my life would have been like had I not had someone like her in it.

I also think it did help that through elementary school I was more or less impervious to teasing. If someone told me I was stupid or smelly or ugly or whatever, I would basically consider their statement and then tell them whether or not I thought they were accurate. No one wants to tease the kid who responds, "Hmmm... Yes, you're right, I do sometimes smell bad" and then wanders away paying no further attention to you. After all, once they'd shared their thought and I'd evaluated it for accuracy, what possible reason could there have been to keep listening to them? It never even occurred to me that they might be doing something other than sharing information that I could then either confirm or deny. This confused and put off the other kids enough that I was deemed a bad target, and was more or less ignored until we got to middle school

I've found that I can feed off of a positive and supportive atmosphere without becoming overly actively socially involved. People do definitely send out social "vibes" or vibrations to each other.

Perhaps I used to process these signals and the atmosphere more holistically than some people. By not focusing on the minutiae of social interaction, I was able to gain a better understanding of how the whole socialising system worked. Observing five hundred people's interactions is about the maximum I can deal with before becoming overwhelmed.

I used to think that school was a building that kids had to go into in order to learn things and study individually.

Now I realise that school is actually a complex interaction between the groups/individuals in the school population and the physical environment of the building.

There has to be a balance between different personality types in order for people to help each other out effectively. If the social structure is unbalanced or the physical environment is in poor condition, there are problems.

I was always grateful for the class clowns. They actually motivated me to do the work by making me laugh. Relevant "clowing" in moderation is great. Too much disruption and the whole system crumbles apart. There must be upper limits of thresholds for different personality types that if exceeded, cause the whole social tribal structure to collapse or the morale to become low.