Automatically believing people?

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Okay... so despite:

1. The fact that I have lied before (although almost never do now because of the way it hurts inside).

2. The fact that I have watched others lie blatantly before.

3. The fact that I have been behind the scenes at, say, the news and know how much ends up fictionalized.

4. The fact that I have known at least one pathological liar who seemed unable to tell the truth even about little meaningless things.

5. The fact that I have known more than one actual sociopath who lied as part of victimizing other people including me and people I knew and cared about.

6. The fact that I know there are lots of little lies that are considered normal (and that even I consider mostly harmless when they're not about anything major).

I still have a hard time not believing what I read or hear from people. This can be so extensive that at one point I had to go back and verify my own memories with family and friends because a bully was lying about my past and I began to doubt my own sanity. It takes a conscious effort of will to remember people are lying even when I know they are (like politicians, or like some of the organizations where I live that will do or say anything to be considered "good" by people other than the ones they screw over).

Anyway, I'm wondering if this is an autistic thing or just an illustration of that thing they discovered where for humans in general, the more they read something the more true they think it is even if they know better. This sort of thing is why I often avoid even reading/listening to politicians, the media, etc. because when I do then I start to believe them even though I know most of them are two faced at best and despicable at worst. And all this is despite the fact that I can often spot dishonest people, am often the one to say "hey, they're not telling the truth", and things like that. It defies all sense.

I know I have a hard time spotting trolls as disingenuous. I remember having trouble in school telling that bullies were actually lying to me when they pretended to be nice as part of a setup. I've had trouble in my adult life with accepting people at face value even when it was not necessarily the case that such acceptance was reasonable.

I've felt frustrated over the years with my apparent naivete despite knowing better, and I feel like it might be a cognitive thing, although one I seem to be somewhat better at now than I used to be.

It has always taken me a long, long while to spot someone who is being 'false', manipulative or lying to me; it's basically because I've had this rather naive view that ALL people are nice, pleasant and honest to each other.

However, with hindsight and endless, exhaustive analysis of almost every conversation I have (or sweeping statements directed at me) and then the aftermath of how some people have treated me, I realise that this idealistic view of people I had, is rarely a reality.

Unfortunately this has made me a person, now, who finds it almost impossible to trust anyone.......I think that's quite sad, because I'm probably missing out on getting to know some really good people.

But, I remember as a child 'picking up' on subtleties adults would say to each other and thinking 'that's not very nice at all'.
I also picked up 'vibes' about situations and would work out what was going on before anything was said, but I suppose children pick up on things far more than is realised.

I'd really rather there was never any need for lying, it just makes things more confusing!

Yeah, I'm like Mar1976, I've been permanently cured of trust. I suppose there's some possibility that with a lot of work I could contract it again. But people seem to find ways to cure you of your trust in them alarmingly often and when said cure doesn't take something out of your financial or physical health it still does take it's toll on your mental health. Thus I try not to mind my cured status too much.

I fairly early moved from tending to trust to tending to doubt.

Still occasionally can get caught, but pretty good at spotting.

I have a hard time telling when someone is lying. I only know someone is lying when it doesn't make sense nor add up. Plus it's obvious sometimes when something is made up. If I know a situation well and someone has a totally different story that doesn't match, I know they are lying. But some people are good at matching things to make it look true to others while I know it's BS.

But I also know just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's not true. My husband doesn't always make sense nor me. Sometimes we can't explain ourselves like why something bothers us for example. So I end up believing BS from people as well and people have to tell me what that person said was BS. Also when someone says something that is BS doesn't mean they are lying because maybe they got that information from somewhere so they are misinformed.

I am often not so quick to jump to a conclusion that someone is lying because of all these possibilities of why they would say it.

I have fallen online over trolls being nice to me and then all of a sudden they go back to insulting me again and being a bully. I feel they take advantage of my niceness because I am always giving people second chances but after having that happen a few times already, I am thinking I am so through being friends with people who were once mean to me online and then all of a sudden they are friendly with me and want to be my friend. I don't understand it or what the point is in it. I was told trolls do that. I also can't stand passive aggressive behavior. Someone is a jerk to me and then nice and then a jerk. Ugh drives me crazy. So I don't take them seriously. I just ignore them. But I can't help being nice back to them when they are nice to me.


Even as a kid I have had friends who were not nice to me and couple of them would lie to me. They even tricked me into using the middle finger. They told me when kids make fun of me, "do this" and they showed me the middle finger. So I started doing it in school. Then when my school principal asked me why I was flipping boys off, I took the word so literal I denied it ever did it. I thought she was saying why was I flipping them off and I was thinking I tick them and they flip as if they were a piece of paper. Then at home mom told me what the middle finger meant after she heard about it.

I still find myself too trustworthy of people. I always think people are being honest and are my friend so I have to work hard to draw lines and not assume someone isn't going to turn on me. In high school, kids would ask me what I thought of someone and I would tell them. They would go to that person and tell them what crap I said about them and fail to mention they asked for my opinion. Then after while I got so sick of it, I quit answering them. Today if anyone were to send me a PM asking me what I think of a member here and if I don't know you well, I will ignore the PM if I happen to have negative opinions about that person because how would I know you aren't going to go to that person and tell them. I do the same at work too, if anyone asks me what I think of our boss or co worker or whoever, not answering. I don't know if they will do that same crap. I never understood that behavior either.

With Aspies it seems you get either extreme. Some have big trouble with the concept of lying, some (like me) have little problem with it and actually have trouble being too paranoid about what other people say and do. Far from assuming everyone is trustworthy, I automatically assume anyone who talks to me has some malicious intent of some sort, which is a good form of protection, but it causes obvious issues with personal relationships.

I seem to forget to try to figure out if someone is lying to me. If some warning flag doesn't go up (sometimes something as unsubstantial as a strong gut felling), I seem to default to the person isn't lying.

I have this too. Very much.

An example: I once had a gf who was cheating on me. I would make long lists as to how I knew this was true, just going over each detail, each quote with dates, (etc) so that I could compare the reality versus the statements and visibly see the disconnect. And yes, I used color coding to help me. lol.

Then I reviewed my material, confronted her and she denied it by just making up crazy nonsense. *I believed her*. I'm sitting on 5 pages of exact reasons why she's lying but she said she wasnt and that totally reset me. I had to walk away, review everything I'd compiled before saying, "oh wait, this is bs, I know better". Then go back at it again with my notes fresh in my mind. It took awhile, and I was often reset, but she admitted it eventually.

So that's my plan if I really need to catch people out. I'm very good at remembering what people say and I go put it in a word document with a date. Then I add more material as they say more things about that subject. You can catch very subtle changes in a story (and big ones) this way and build your case over time. Ive used it twice anyway.

My instinct is always to believe people. I can and do lie, but only to save myself embarrassment. My natural instinct is to assume that everybody else is like that. If someone talks to me face-to-face, and makes an excuse, my instinct is to believe them, because it is very hard for me to understand why someone would lie. The whole concept is incomprehensible to me.

I do not get caught too often, though. Although my instinct is to trust, I have trained myself to examine everything that I am told, and to be aware of possible lies. This is a conscious thing for me.

I really do not understand how some people are able to detect liars without thinking things through. That ability completely eludes me.

I wonder if this is related to the way that the phenomenon of the "big lie" works. IOW, that the BL works by being so audacious that it makes you feel like a person would not be able to do that -- that they'd feel so bad or wrong that they almost physically wouldn't be able to do it, so therefore what they're saying must be true.

So maybe if a person him- or herself is immensely bothered by lying, it makes it more inconceivable that someone else could do it easily/smoothly/outrageously. Or, that it would even occur to them to do it in the first place.

I almost always assume people are honest. I don't necessarily assume they're right or believe them on factual matters. It rarely occurs to me that someone might be lying.

It's my impression that people don't lie to me or around me very often, so that in my experience believing that people are honest is mostly right. But now I wonder if maybe I have simply been oblivious to times when people have lied to me. If so, it hasn't been common in contexts where it would ultimately become clear that they were lying.

I was capable of lying as a child but trained myself out of it strongly enough that I now find it very hard to lie even for a game in which lying is part of the game.

I understand little white lies to save someone from feeling hurt or embaresment or to save one's ass. And I do make these kinds of lies sometimes. But making up big stuff to impress someone, or to give someone the bum steer? It boggles my pea brain. I tend to believe everyone when they are in my presence, then, as soon as they are gone away I doubt everything. I seem to be extremely gullible and totally paranoid at the same time.

i can't tell when someone is telling the truth or not. i also knew a pathological liar and determining that was a logic puzzle and took a long time. then i realized nothing he said was true. but in the beginning i did as you, doubting my memory (which is unreliable often anyway) when he said we had known each other before and i did not think it was so.

i don't really know how to answer the question because like someone said above i long ago (sadly) learned to lean toward doubt. but i am very black and white about it and if someone ever lies (except for little things very obviously done to spare feelings such as "you look nice" if someone asks "how do i look?") i do not trust them at all. and i twist myself up in knots trying to figure out why someone would do it. in that sense i am naive. i have a lot of trouble believing that anyone would lie casually or without being torn up about it.