special interest is people

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What if your special interest is people and understanding them and you had that at a young age? Would it be possible to learn to socialize just fine because of it?

Just me musing.

Doubt it, unfortunately but I'm sure more understanding is possible. People always fascinate me, but more like something elusive and shiny.

I'm very interested in people, but it doesn't help that much. If I'm actively trying to be sociable and read the unspoken signs, I can manage for a while, and people do say I'm a very good listener, but there's still a barrier there and I still miss-read situations or come across wrong.

Within certain contexts I can read people quite well, if I'm looking for particular signs, but if I'm not looking for them, or thinking about the conversation from another perspective, I miss them.

I tend to have an A game socially, and then my energy slumps snd I'm down to a C game.

And I do sincerely care about other people.

no--in some ways it makes socialising more difficult. basically it turns you into a hyper-analyst to the extent that many people can't be around you because you can't stop psycho-socially analysing them or yourself at any given moment. people tend to find this inconvenient and apparently irksome. such has been my experience.

perhaps if you also have an innate capacity for performance/acting? (i certainly don't.)

I think people are maybe a special interest of mine and I think I get them pretty well in theory. But in practice one on one, forget it. Or maybe I just understand fiction and real life escapes me. Or maybe I understand nothing, but I don't know it.

I don't do well at socializing but I have taken a special interest in learning to understand body language, buying books and watching videos on the subject. It seems like people only want to use body language for figuring out the opposite sex, which is pointless to me, or for some issue having to do with money, such as using body language to help sell people something. But I like studying body language just to learn about human behavior. It seems like to me that a lot of people think they know a little about reading other people but when it comes to someone reading THEM, suddenly body language has no credibility. Funny how things like that work.

I think it depends on the unique blend of skills, talents, aptitudes and ineptitudes that is "you."

Some people probably could learn to socialize just fine. Others, no how, no way, no where. Then there are the in-between folks...

It's kind of like the difference between someone who's truly bilingual, versus those who speak a second language fluently, versus those who studied it for 2 years in college and can get by, versus those whose foreign-language skills end at being able to ask for a beer and bathroom with a very thick accent.

Not really, because all of my knowledge in cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology, neurology, history, art, and whatever else I've obsessed over when it comes to people (most of my special interests are related to people, their thoughts and behaviors over time), doesn't make eye contact feel any less unnerving, doesn't help me regulate the tone and volume of my voice, doesn't help me to interpret the incredibly dynamic world of social subtext which simply can't be taught academically, and it doesn't make my own language any less idiomatic. Not only that, but my practically encyclopedic knowledge of subjects ranging from brain scans, to the teeth of australopethicus aferensis or a. robustus, to ceremonial kula ring trade in the pacific islands, to group dynamics and cognitively separated stages of relationships, actually isolates me from common people because they aren't interested in such subjects and understanding social subtext and social gestures is very different from my interests.

Let's look at it like this: knowing what "happy" looks like on a brain scan is entirely different from recognizing that emotion when you look at someone's face. You could be aware of pretty much everything from how humans have genetically developed, to every event in history, to every philosophical or artistic idea ever had by a human, to the particulars of every culture in the world, and still be unable to socialize well with people.

Like another poster said such knowledge can actually cause you to be overly analytical. Over-analyzing is probably one of the biggest social humps for me. I could probably look up your genealogy and puzzle out why you have the phenotypes that you do such as eye color, tell you about your biochemistry and brain size and composition, tell you your family history, tell you how certain behaviors of yours originally developed from arboreal primates (from diet to methods of competition over mates), define your cultural setting for you and explain how history shaped the city you live in and the financial system you are in, why you get your surname from your father (if you do), what type of learner you are, how you figure in demographically, go over your philosophies and how they developed historically from thinkers like Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Aquinas, Al-Ghazali, Sri Sri Chandrakathin, Ormnathakur, Averrinoes, Kierkegaard, Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. until I was red in the face (and obviously looked like a pretty damned big smarty pants and arrogant bastard) and still fail utterly at interacting with you socially.

Actually, the sheer enormity of the subject of people and the number of academic disciplines I've obsessed over makes assessing people even more troublesome. Now I have that much more material to confuse me. And it's sad because all the time people are right there next to me who can never realize just how interested I am in them, how enamored I am with them. I've had a tendency to over obsess with people who I don't even know that well and they find it uncomfortable that I am extremely infatuated with them. They can't possibly see why I value them that much, how utterly flabbergasting and incredible they are to me. They must be thinking while I obsess over them "dude I barely know you" while I'm thinking "god, it's like I'm looking at the Sistine chapel, the Taj Mahal, a Rembrant painting, a Walt Whitman poem, a nocturne by Chopin, like I'm watching Schindler's List, like I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita or the book of Job, like I've just stumbled upon a rune carved in granite..."

Ok, so there's understanding psychology and sociology and different cultures, and there's understanding what it means when someone smiles at you. I'm not talking about a 'young age' like 16 and you choose to study psychology. I mean, like, as a child, like a few years old, specifically paying attention to things like body language and eye contact because you wanted to understand other people well, and wanting to learn how people react to you to so you can make them react the way you want them to. Or am I just describing a non-autistic here? :-p

Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know

I have special interests with people! Not people in general, but certain people. Although these people that I get obsessed with are no different to the next person, but to me they are fascinating. I got my first obsession with a person (an art teacher at school) when I was 11. Obsessions with people are not the same as sexual fantasies. I can get sexually obsessed over a man, and competitively obsessed over a woman. It's a different thing.

When I was a child, I was actually rather obsessed with socialising. I found socialising awkward myself (well, I must have been socially awkward as a child, otherwise I wouldn't have had more friends than I did). But I was still very interested in people. When I was about 8 I even made up an NT girl in my head, and pretended I was this girl and my cousins played along and quite enjoyed me being a ''different person''. This went on and off until I was about 13, then I grew out of it and knew it was coming to a time where kids started to lose their playful imaginations and didn't want to play along any more and just wanted me to be me. But anyway, I remember always drawing pictures of me socialising with my cousins, and writing stories about it too, and I even cut out paper people of me and my cousins (and the made-up person that I was). I think I so badly wanted to be part of the NT world that I had to make it come real in stories and pictures. That's what getting a diagnosis at an age as early as 8 makes you do.

And I have became an adult with anxiety issues and social phobia. So always being the type of Aspie that obsesses over people (I have an obsession with bus-drivers now) doesn't work wonders for you. Although I am good with reading non-verbal cues. Even my mum says that a lot.

Hi cavernio,

I have always considered that I don't have a special interest, however your post indicated that maybe I do.

In my life I have always found it difficult to fit in. Due to that I spend a lot of my time observing people, their interactions, and their behaviours.
At times it has got me into trouble; when for example I was interested in watching the verbal & body language interactions of a couple having an argument in the bus station. The man saw me watching and said "What are you looking at?". I replied "I was just interested in your interaction". He wasn't at all happy, and so I walked away. Thankfully he didn't follow.

I know that by observing social interactions I have learnt how to "immitate". To copy, so that I can blend in. There are parts of social interaction that I just cannot seem to grasp, however I endevour to do so.