Ever noticed that people don't really answer your questions?

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Do you find that when you ask people questions that require more than a yes/no answer, they might say something related to your question but don't actually answer exactly what you asked? Sometimes even when you ask them multiple times in a row?

Yes, the weather is nice today.

Yes, in my case they seem to misunderstand what I am trying to ask.

All the time! Of course, since my social skills aren't really the best there are, it's a fact that sometimes people just don't understand the question because I wasn't clear enough. But that can't be the case all the time, so I suppose it's just socially unacceptable to answer certain questions or something.

I suspect that people sometimes subconsciously decide that you don't really mean to ask whatever you have actually asked. Maybe they misunderstand because they try to read into it when there's nothing to read into.

Yes, and it's something that often annoys me. It's frustrating that they so rarely seem to get that when I ask them a question, I'm asking for a direct answer to that question. I don't usually want the answer to another question I never asked. I don't want them to start talking about something that seems irrelevent to my question, expecting me to trust that at some point they'll come somewhere close enough to answering me that I'll be able to make the leap between what I wanted of them and what they've given me. Because a lot of the time they never reach that point.

As for why they do it, I guess NTs find it easier to extract the meaning they require from the context and to generally make sense of nebulous, poorly-focussed talking. They don't expect a questioner to want a literal answer to the same degree that I want a literal answer. NTs are probably more comfortable with letting things go. And there's a lot of dishonesty at the heart of question-dodging, and I tend to be rather pedantic about honesty. Tact also may come into it - sometimes a literal answer might rock the boat or come over as offensive, and changing the subject a little can smooth things over quite nicely.

I think honesty tends to give away power to others, so in a competitive environment answering questions directly can earn you a low place in the food chain. I noticed at work that it was sometimes possible to get out of a sticky conversation with a boss by ducking questions and thus changing the subject slightly. I didn't do that much, because it doesn't naturally occur to me to, and when I do I tend to feel guilty and accuse myself of being sneaky, though I think it's frequently justified with bosses, as they're notorious for pushing people around and ripping them off, so you have to fight back with something occasionally.

Note that in some walks of life there's an expectation of direct, literal answers to questions - court cases, exams and other objective tests, science, and (I guess) most communication in which the plan is to arrive at the truth.

If you really want to get good answers you need to provide sufficient time for people to formulate answers. I'd have running conversations with people at lunchtime while waiting for the microwave. Ask a question and get a good answer another day.

Yes!! ! Thats like the constant issue. What happens is that they misunderstand my question and answer the question that I weren't asking, so I then I repeat the question, but then they repeat their previous answer and I am like no thats not what I asked. But no matter how many times I repeat my question, they kept interpretting it in the same exact way they interpretted it the first time, even though thats not what I meant.

One thing I noticed is that there are questions people "Usually" ask but my questions aren't very usual -- so they will replace my question with the "Usual" question that they have. Here is an example. So I have a question: about a month ago I was asking a girl -- who is Republican and anti-vaccine -- the following question: why is it that Democrats are pro-vaccine and Republicans are anti-vaccine, why does opinion on vaccine correlates on opinion on political issues. Then she would answer that question by citing her reasons why she is anti-vaccine (and her reasons weren't political at all -- they were all about medical stuff). So I told her "I agree with your reasons -- I am anti-vaccine too -- but you didn't answer my question: you didn't tell me about the connection between the things you said and political beliefs". But then she would just repeat her reasoning for being anti-vaccine. Same goes with talking to the Democrats. I might ask a Democrat "what is the connection between concern over global warming and believing in Democrat politics". And then the Democrat would tell me scientific facts about global warming. And I would say "hey I agree with the scientific facts that you cited, and I believe in global warming -- despite the fact that I am a Republican -- and thats why I have this question: why do other Republicans not believe in global warming -- more precisely what is the connection between belief in global warming and political views" but the Democrat won't hear me they would just repeat their reasons in belief in global warming, which doesn't address my question.

I think what it boils down to is that very few people ask the type of questions that I am asking and great many people ask the other kinds of questions so people just assume I ask what most people ask. But in actuality I don't ask what most people ask. If I want to know the answer to what most people ask, I can just use google. The reason I ask the questions I do is precisely the fact that others don't ask them so I feel weird that those things stare in your face yet nobody asks -- so I ask. But since nobody else asks them, thats why people can't see it that I do and instead assume I ask one of the "common" questions.