Aspies and lying

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I was recently reading this thread wrongplanet. net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2706&start=75 and it completely baffled me how many people with Asperger's legitimately thought that they were good at lying. People try to say that some aspies can be good liars,however just because an aspergers person THINKS that they are good liars does not mean that they actually are. [Removed at member request]

Can someone please shed some light on this subject?

Hard to say. I know little kids who have poor theory of mind will often "lie" when someone asks for a confession because they don't understand the point of the question. (Example: There is a parent, a toddler, and a cookie in the room. The parent commands the toddler to not eat the cookie. The parent is momentarily distracted, and suddenly the cookie is gone and the toddler's face and hands are covered in cookie crumbs. Parent correctly assumes the kid ate the cookie. Parent asks "Did you eat the cookie?" for some reason I don't understand. The kid hasn't reached a developmental stage where he can even conceive of the parent not knowing something that he knows, so he correctly assumes the parent knows the truth. Toddler realizes "Oh... right... wasn't supposed to eat that cookie" and figures the correct answer is "no." The parent was looking for a confession, not a retrospective correction, and gets mad at the kid for lying.) However, I don't think adults will have problems like this unless they are severely disabled.

If he has poor theory of mind (not as bad a toddler, surely, but still doesn't do an adequate job of putting himself in another person's metaphorical shoes), maybe he believes that you don't know the truth.

Possibly he's trying to make you doubt your perception or memory (gaslighting)... and apparently failing miserably.

Maybe he feels it doesn't matter if you know the truth. For example, if he took and eat some food that belonged to you and you want him to buy replacement food, he'll deny taking it in order to avoid replacing it. Even if you know the truth and he knows you know, denying it still gives him an "excuse" not to replace the food.

Maybe it is a nervous defense mechanism.

When NPD/sociopaths lack "empathy" and autistic people lack "empathy," it's using two different definitions of empathy, and neither quite match the dictionary definition. (These are sometimes referred to as two kinds of empathy, but I think it makes sense to just consider them two different things that just happen to share a word due to a quirk of language.) So I don't think that aspect suggests a biological connection. I know reactive attachment disorder (which is effectively a form of sociopathy, at least if it's bad enough and left untreated) is caused by environmental factors in early childhood. So if a child's parent(s) were incompetent enough due to any of their own developmental disorders, presumably that could cause sociopathy in a child who otherwise wouldn't have a disorder. Not sure how common that is or if it has any relevance to your situation.

Not sure why we should take your word for anything when you admit that you have NPD. It seems likely that you are overestimating your own abilities at lie-detecting, and may in fact be completely wrong. NPD is associated with grandiosity, as I'm sure you know.

Narcissism and sociopathy aren't really that similar, anyway. Narcissism is believed to be largely caused by environmental factors, whereas sociopathy is thought to have biological origins in most cases. It's possible that your father's possible Asperger's syndrome affected you in such a way as to cause your NPD, I suppose.

Successful lying requires theory of mind to an extent. But with practice, it's easy to lie. All it requires is lack of guilt and enough intelligence and self-confidence to pull it off. I don't see why those with autism would be unable to do so if they decided it was what they wanted.

I think the reasons may be the lack of theory of mind (being able to picture how other people think and feel) and difficulties in reading the emotional reactions of the people he's lying to. He can't really tell that his lies are being seen through and are angering people, or he can't read the look of disbelief. The poor theory of mind means we tend to think that everybody thinks and feels the way we do--people lie to him and get away with it, so maybe he thinks he can too.

I thought I could read people's emotions pretty well until I got diagnosed. Then I had several instances in which I had totally misread the situation. I realized that a lot of the misunderstandings and arguments I'd had in the past were because I had misread the situation. As I read more about Asperger's, I realized that I really did think and feel differently from most people, a lot more than I had thought.

Aspies often look like liars when they're telling the truth, so the usual signs to tell when we're actually lying are less reliable than they are in neurotypicals.



He doesn't need a diagnosis: he's a successful, independent adult and your father, so there's nothing wrong with him, aspie or not. As my parents wisely taught me, problems aren't the fault of the one who causes them, but of the one who suffers them---they're the latter's problem, not the former's.



What do you mean by fail? Does he suffer any ill consequences for not convincing you? It doesn't look so---more like you are the only one suffering from it. Therefore, he's not failing at all, so he doesn't have to worry about it.

Don't forget you're not his equal. He can only win at this game, and you can only lose. In the mildest case, he'll lie and you'll remain aware that he's lying. Perhaps he isn't aware himself---people can be amazingly skilful at selectively remembering what they want to, conveniently distorted in their favor and against you, and discarding what they don't. Otherwise, he can successfully gaslight you. My parents have often told me I'd dreamed things I remembered vividly, or that they were a product of my mentally diseased imagination.



That's what empathy is. It doesn't imply sympathy. Empathy is good for finding out the most effective way to destroy someone, too.



Probably because the benefits outweigh the costs to him. He doesn't seem to care whether you spot the lies, because he can systematically invalidate you and you can do nothing about it other than endure the constant pressure to give in and believe his lies so you can finally have some peace. The real test would be to see what he does when talking to someone he really needs to convince and respect.

I find it hard to lie and I'm always paranoid that people think I'm lying when I'm telling the truth.

Its like I'm cursed or something.

Sociopathy is caused by environment.Psycopathy is the one that is caused by genetics. Sociopathy and Malignant Narcissism shoes many traits. The reason Aspies cannot be good liars is because they lack theory of mind. If my dad was an asperger and failed to show me adequate empathy as a child(he would beat me when I didn't respond the way his logic dictated i should) then he could have caused me psychological damage. I don't understand why Aspies are always portrayed as harmless individuals when in reality the damage they cause to their family members is just as severe as other conditions.

My dad doesn't convince me of anything. I am 21 now and I beat him mercilessly when I was 15 and 16. My dad knows that I am a dangerous individual and I call him out aggressively when he attempts to gaslight me. I get relentlessly angry at him,the reason I do not think he is a narcissist/sociopath is because he struggled raising me when I was a young boy and would always turn to violence or bribery to get me to act how he wanted me too. He doesn't have the theory of mind to manipulate me successfully even though he has 30 IQ points on me.

@Spider PIG

So if your father molests you and causes you sexual trauma you are saying that it is YOUR fault because you are suffering the aftermath? Seems to me like you are getting defensive over your own asperger diagnosis.

Then you're abusing him at his own home and he should have kicked you out by now, calling the police and getting a restraining order if necessary, and meeting you at the door with a shotgun if you come back.

I wonder why he let you escalate the violence so far, but, at any rate, that is his responsibility.



He shouldn't even need to manipulate you. "If you don't like the way stuff is done at my home, go away and don't come back" ought to be enough.



Yes, it is. It's up to you to do anything about it, or just move on and leave him and the past behind if it's too late for that, so you can at least succeed in life and get healthy relationships.



Maybe, maybe not; irrelevant either way.

Sociopathy and psychopathy are actually two words that mean the same thing. One of my interests is psychology. Not all aspies lack theory of mind. They have varying degrees of difficulties with theory of mind, but it can actually be learned, to an extent.

I'm not sure who told you that aspies are always harmless individuals. There are many that are total @ssholes, and they can be mean and abusive, just like anyone else.

And then some aspies are perfectly nice people that just have trouble in certain areas, but cause harm to no one.

We can actually be quite different from each other. I certainly don't fit the stereotype.

I hate when people on autism forums say "you THINK you do X, but you probably do Y."

I mean, how would you feel if somebody came up to you and said, "what colour is the sky?" and you said, "blue", and they said, "you THINK the sky's blue, but it is actually green. You've been seeing it wrong all your life, everyone else knows the sky is green."?

That's how I feel when Aspies here try to tell me that just because I have AS it means I cannot lie or read body language and that I'm just living in a fantasy world believing that my social skills "are better than they really are."

User name Don Trump - total posts so far 3 = sockpuppet?

I am trying to reply but I keep getting looped in a CAPCHA hell.

Don: If you get a Capcha, use the screen-back button of your browser. With your cursor in the message box, use Ctrl-A, then Ctrl-C, to select All, then Copy. Click Submit. Pass the Capcha, then you will probably see an empty message box. Click in it, use Ctrl-V to paste. (sorry, I've never found a mnemonic for Ctrl-V.) Click Submit again and it will go succeed.

http://pastebin.com/k3b3Trn1

I can't get this to work I already tried cutting and pasting.

Anybody can learn to lie. Sometimes it's a reaction based in fear. Sometimes it's not understanding the question.

Not understanding the question or appropriate response:

"Did you knock that over?"
"No." ('Knocking over' has been used to describe a willful action, not bumping into things by accident)
This happened to me a lot.

Person you are terrified of asks:

"Did you knock that over?"
"No." (Because this person only shows interest when angry and has been violent even when honest)

You will get real good very quickly. It's not about anything but survival in that case. Amazing how that will hone your abilities.

That being said, I could not lie to save my life now. I'm not in those positions and I just don't see the need. Why keep up with all that additional crap? Tell it like it is, take the consequences and you don't have to remember what you said to whom and when.

Most people do not know what to do with it either when you're honest.