Do you consider yourself to be intuitive?

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I'm kind of a Jung typology/Myers Briggs nerd and there's a lot of debate about Aspies and people with other disorders mistyping as intuives.

The most common AS types are INTJ and INTP.

I'm an INTP but I'm also NT, I know that I actually read people quite well. while missing some obvious things.

There are a lot of INTPs with Aspeger's on the forums and lots of people that consider themselves "experts" (armchair psychiatrists) who say that people with AS only type as INTx because they live inside of their own minds but that they are more like sensing types ("S" types) because they are literal and not good at reading others.

I've thought about saying I disagree because some people with AS are actually very good at reading people, they just aren't tuned in with some of the more obvious things in their environment, but I don't know how often that's really the case.

So what do you think? Can an Aspie be typed correctly at all? Do you think it appears that you aren't capable of reading people because you're paying too much attention to what's beneath the surface or that you actually lack that skill and are more likely ISTJ/ISTP types?

Last edited by EXPECIALLY on 12 May 2012, 8:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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I'm an INTP too, i didn't know people with asperger are more likely to be INTP's. However, it's strange that the description of Asperger seems to be so identical with the one of ACC. Could there be a misunderstanding? Maybe it's just a matter of personality?

I'm INTP, so yes.

I don't really understand what's meant by intuition. It seems what's meant is "stuff that just comes to you", some sort of cognitive process that happens below the level of awareness. Which I do get, but rarely in relation to people's nature.

Sometimes I can read people really, really well - but usually not in the moment. It takes me time to think about it and infer reasons for their behaviour, testing my ideas to see if they can predict their behaviour, re-evaluating for unexpected results, etc etc etc. I don't think I just get some magical sense about it. I'm just really good at developing predictive models. I base them on principles that are useful, like, the idea that all behaviour is a stimulus response of some sort (thats probably the most fundamental one). And then I work from there. The results seem to be very scattershot, some things about people I seem to have a profound understanding about, other things are an utter mystery.

I type as INTP as well. I would say the description suits me fairly well.

I can read other people instinctively, I always have been able to. It seems to be a common Aspie trait that I have not got (thank God for that - I could do with missing an Aspie trait).

Not sure if this example is relavent to what the original poster of this thread is referring to, but I will give it anyway:-

My aunt: Guess how much this jacket was! (I automatically knew that her tone of voice meant it was expensive for what it was)
Me: £30?
My aunt: No (I automatically knew her tone of voice meant ''no, more!'')
Me: £40?
My aunt: No (I automatically knew her tone of voice meant ''no, more!'')
Me: £60?
My aunt: No (I automatically knew her tone of voice meant ''no, more!'')
Me: £100?
My aunt: No (I automatically knew her tone of voice meant ''no, not that much'' this time)
Me: Oh. Uh, £80?
My aunt: £85!

When my aunt was saying ''no'', I didn't even have to figure out what her tone of voice meant, I just already knew and ''read between the lines'' sort of thing. Is this intuition?

I'm ISTP/ISTJ depending on the day. Sometimes I can actually type as an ESTJ, too. But ISTP is what I scored on my first test, and the descriptions fit most. But yeah, ISTP all the way.

One thing that was interesting is I scored like 16 on Simon Baron Cohen's empathy score, and on personalitycafe, all the different types took the empathy quiz. ISTPs all scored with a few random outliers, abysmally low like that, a lot of 8s, but mostly like 16. The ISTJs meanwhile scored like lower 20s usually, with a few random "flier" 16s, and the INTPs scored lower 20s and above. But I found it interesting the ISTPs pretty much across the board completely failed SBC's empathy test.

That is interesting.

I still don't know that much about the functions and especially how they change depending on what order they're in. I was reading something and someone was saying ( I guess?) that J types often have an S/N split, so they can use both more so than other types.

If that's true it could explain why ISTPs would be the most lacking in empathy but I don't know if it is.

I know INTJs always seem to have more common sense than I do and aren't really as spacey.. I lost track of my average S/N percentages but I'm usually pretty low for S.

Last edited by EXPECIALLY on 12 May 2012, 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This sounds a lot like me, actually.

I tend to analyze human behavior in retrospect and even the bahvior of fictional characters as opposed to analyzing and understanding it in real time, in real life.

In Jungian speak it describes abstract thinking. Intuitives are more able to make random connections and follow a non-linear thinking process than sensing types.

Different things are said about Aspies in this regard. First we were hearing that abstract thinking is impaired in AS, recently I've heard that people with AS are thought to be better at it and have higher fluid intelligence which also relates to intuition.

So I personally think that people with AS are described as literal and concrete due to the social deficit, but that it isn't really a feature shared by the rest of the cognitive functions and that most of you probably aren't like ISTPs or ISTJs in many regards.

They are steroetyped as being less intelligent, I won't even start talking about IQ tests because I truly believe that different types of intelligence exist for a reason and I don't care that N types have higher IQ scores. I do think the autistic learning process resembles something closer to intuition.

Yes! I have to reflect a bit on a novel or movie, retrospectively, to grasp it sometimes. In real-time there is no analysis, its just a matter of recognizing behaviours and motivations that I've come to understand, like taking a shape and trying to fit it into a corresponding opening. Sometimes there is no match, other times there is a perfect match. People see this as either incredible insight, or an amazing lack thereof.



I have a very fluid and dynamic way of looking at things, and I tend to understand things in terms of underlying principles which relate things to other things. Specifics I recognize from how they deviate from their class. I make mistakes with specifics often. Other people with different thinking styles seem to have more difficulty perceiving universals, but, they are more capable with specifics because they look at a specific instance in a more discrete way. So far I have found no particular difference in the AS community in terms of distribution of abstract thinkers vs specific thinkers, what I've mainly noticed is that individuals tend to be more pronounced one way or the other.

I don't think that personality typing works well for me. I can't do the personality tests, because I can't decide which of the answers fit me, or none of the answers fit me.

I have intuition for physical non-social things, but I suck at reading people. I don't think in a way that allows me to remember that the idear of reading people eggsists, much less read people. I don't have social intuition, and I have no idear whether people are being nice or mean to me, and I rarely remember that there is such a thing as people being nice or mean to each other.

On tests I'm near the middle on the T/F and P/J spectrum, but I'm always a strong IN**. With the questions I sometimes feel like answering literally gives the wrong impression. Based on descriptions though I'd best describe myself as INTP.

My mental strength is intuition, not brute cognitive feats like rote memory or quick calculation. I have the kind of intellect where I can see vague connections between things and find it fascinating, but I often have more trouble translating what may hit inside my like some kind of epiphany or eureka moment. I sometimes feel like I suck at communicating what I'm really thinking.

As for reading people, being such a hermit I don't have a good way to assess myself. My intuition is more an aspect of general intellect, not really an interpersonal skill. I've had counselors tell me I'm more insightful than most people, but it's not like that makes it any easier to function or feel like I fit in with anyone.

I used to think I'm intuitive, but now I put it down to being arrogant when I thought about it as 'intuition' - I was jaded and telling myself people go by a predictable set of behaviours, and therefore are formulaic and easy to foresee.

However, nowadays with my depression and other issues, I lost my passion for getting into the mind of others, I can barely even understand my own self anymore.

I'm INTJ. Observation and a little logic can take you a long way towards seeming spookily intuitive.

I took the test three times.
Once from a career workshop where they actually hand you a booklet, a scantron sheet and a #2 pencil to fill in the circles and my type was INTJ.
Other two times were from two different online questionnaires, both came out to INTP. I guess I'm intuitive in a sense that I'm good at sensing what kind of person he/she may be but ultimately it's their speech and behavior that fails me at reading people. I should just follow my aspie gut.

Ah, brevity. Nicely put.