Are NTs as good at reading people as we think they are?

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I was reading this book on psychology. It was about NTs. Aspies weren't mentioned but it was interesting stuff. One of the things mentioned was that when someone has to give a speech and they feel nervous, they'll worry that the audience will notice now nervous they are and that makes them even more nervous. The truth is the audience probably won't notice. This is called the Illusion of Transparency. In severe cases the speaker can get into a feedback loop until their audience really does notice they're nervous. This feedback loop can be prevented with prior knowledge of The Illusions of Transparency.

Anyway this whole thing has made me question if NTs are really as good at reading people as I've been lead to believe. Any thoughts guys?

People think me and my friend are angry all the time when naturally are faces are just normally that way

Really good point, and that Illusion of Transparency is all to real, isn't it? I'm often down on myself for not being as intuitively able to 'mindread' as an NT. BUT......NTs sure get it wrong often enough. At least we have logic on our side.

I know a really nice NT who I consider highly empathetic and a good 'people person' who is quite popular (plus just generally a nice person). He told me that once he paid an good acquaintance for a service and later was really cheated. That is, he seriously mis-read this person! Mind reading skills are fallible, even for the most empathic NT. I guess the problem is that reading people is inherently dicey because there are no rules!

No I can't read minds...

I can basically tell how people are feeling from a fleeting expression, or tone in their voice or guestures/posture.

I have a sense of how they are responding to what I say/do, and can quickly adjust to make the interaction go well.

I think a lady in the bakery is interested in me because she is very friendly and our conversation goes well [she remembers very well what we discussed before which clues me in that our conversation was important to her] and she really really looks at me in a way that makes me think she is really really looking at me because she is just interested in how I look. I really have no idea what she is thinking but she seems to be hinting at something. Honestly I don't know. Just my imagination perhaps... anyway, I can read her expression and react by being more friendly or less friendly or more animated or quieter or whatever it takes so that she is comfortable with me and our interactions. Even then I am a little bit guessing. I can tell what she likes and doesn't like but when it's something she seems not so happy with, I have to guess what to do. I don't know what she is really thinking. I am guessing that I am not talking to her enough and perhaps she moved to a quieter place in the store hoping I would go there too but I am shy and don't want to harass her and in a split second made the wrong decision to go to the register when I should have gone where she was.

Off topic: Would someone be kind enough to explain to me what is wrong with being nervous? Is it not a normal human emotion sometimes and why should one feel embarrassed about it please?

On topic: no they have never read me accurately as far as I can remember. They have similar belief systems though and similar ways of thinking and perceiving things as a result. Ie They are taught to believe that failure is bad and that if a person fails it means they are a failure or weak or bad themselves. This is a ridiculous and subjective conclusion to draw as it is not in the least bit logical and provides no objective information with which to work with at all (In my view failure is a learning curve that is often a necessary part of the learning process. Also it can help to define where a persons skills lie and where they do not...this provides the person with necessary information that they can use to better the quality of their life, their health, succeed at a project they are working or move on to choose one that they are more suited to so success can be achieved that way instead etc).

However because they all believe that failure = bad and that bad = negative they will all percieve someone failing in a similar manner and draw similar conclusions about how they must be feeling. Basically they assume someone who has just failed must be feeling bad and must be in need of emotional comfort...personally I get distracted by why my project didn't work out and become obsessed with, or overly focused on, finding a practical solution or correcting any errors I made in order to try again to see if I can succeed with another attempt. I actually enjoy this process and become excited by it. I have little time for emotional comfort I don't need at those times.

Ie if I had not lost weight this week I would review my data to see if I can figure out why wieghtloss has not occurred. It may be that I need to make some adjustments. Now I get the fun of spending hours analysing data and coming up with improvements to my weight loss program. Meanwhile if i were to post about my not having lost weight this week (which by the way I did lose 2lbs making that 7.4 lbs lost in total over the last fortnight, so my example is hypothetical) then I would come back later and find a whole load of replies from people assuming I must be feeling awful and trying to give me endless cyber hugs and comfort.

Ummm I have forgotten about my disappointment now thank you and am excited about exacting my changes and making my analysis. I actually enjoy doing stuff like that. I only become frustrated when other people are involved for some reason...their approach stresses me out and upsets me i think.

Now for someone else with a similar way of thinking to them, their replies would be required and wonderful. For me they are just annoying, even though I am sure they are just trying to help.

So no they are not empathic as believed, they just share similar belief systems and ways of thinking about the world that allows them to communicate with each other because they share similar responses.

I do not know what the correct psychological terms are as I no longer read up on psychology. It used to be my first academic love but I have lost so much faith in the field that I now refer to it as 'psychobabble clap trap', especially areas of psychology that rely on CBT and therapy.

Last edited by bumble on 27 Oct 2013, 5:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ps people did used to notice my nervousness when i used to be scared about giving presentations as my hands would physically shake and they were aware of it.

However, they were always very nice about it and would come up to me afterwards and ask me if I was ok as they had never seen anyone shake so much. I thought it was sweet of them to be concerned although I was usually fine by that point as the presentation was now over.

I hated giving presentations, especially with my grade average. When everyone knows you get A grades they have higher expectations of you. There was too much pressure especially as my focus was more on enjoying the learning itself and my grades were technically just accidents as result of all the fun I was having going to lectures and in the library at lunch time and at night.

I miss taking exams and writing essays. I used to enjoy them.

We make mistakes all the time in reading people.

I think that reading people is really complex, so there's plently of room for error. As LabPet said people with autism go with logic and reason, N.Ts don't, or don't as much. Reading people via instinct will let you down from time to time. It can tell the basic emotion that a person is feeling, but then you have to consciously think why they are feeling that. We don't always get it right.

I think that us N.Ts have a greater tendency to misread people on the spectrum. I'm not sure if I'm right about that.

There are also times when N.Ts don't pick up on sarcasm or humour. The other day at work a collegue told me something that was supposed to be a joke, but I didn't pick up on this and believed him!

We can occasionally take things too literally. I know it happened to me the other day, but I can't quite remember what it was.

However, we can often lack empathy, even though we supposed to be highly empathetic.

To bumble - yes, there is an awful lot of psychobabble IMO. I find people get hung up on it, especially in areas like body language, and miss any bigger picture by misdirecting themselves - people tend to see what they want to see.

And that's my main point. NTs aren't automatically better at reading people. Many people just read a projection of themselves. I generally read people very well now (not always, of course!) because of work, and realising I was a bit over the shop many years ago.

On the speech in front of the audience - if the speaker feels nervous, and allows himself not to worry about being nervous, he/she doesn't necessarily have to cover it up. A lot of people find it endearing to know there's a human being talking to them. The feedback loop illustrates my point - people tend to see what they want to see.

Retro - as I said before, beware the books! The most useful - and the most simplest - one I ever read argued that you had to understand yourself properly before you could read anyone else with enough accuracy. This I hold to.

I completely agree. That is what I do. I base my reading off of how I am. This of course doesn't always work because people don't have the same sense of humor.

And even if you read someone accurately, they can literally change their mind faster than you can blink ... which is why I like to read people over time and see how their reactions "average".

Evaluations at work make me nervous and if affects my performance. For example, my mouth gets dry then the pace of my lesson changes as I try to say less ... I am not embarrassed exactly but my emotional reaction is different than normal and so my teaching ends up being different and not as good and then I get more nervous... Yeah, I should know that and have a bottle of water ... but sometimes it's an unannounced type of observation.

Last edited by realityIs on 27 Oct 2013, 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think NTs are that good at reading other people, but accuracy and factual correctness are not significant within their paradigm. Typically they sort of look in the mirror when they look at someone. If what they see they can identify with then they feel comfortable. If they can't then they don't. If the person they are looking at is good at manipulating people they can fool most NTs. And if they pick up on certain features that they identify with they may believe that person is something they are not. Most NTs are quite vulnerable and easily hurt. Mostly the actions that many NTs display toward AS and the like is because they can't identify with us, or interpret our behaviour as though we are one of them. We actually make this same mistake.

You know loosewheel, I don't think your wheel is loose and that you understand me pretty well. Actually, you may understand "people" better than most people do.

I remember the first person with Aspergers I knew as a child. I really couldn't understand him or why someone would behave like him because I wasn't like him. I wasn't mean about it though - just perplexed why he didn't play the same way as us.

A most interesting hypothesis!



People often can't detect my deadpan humour. But saying it deadpan makes it funnier!



Don't worry. I'm not reading one of those evil books on psychological manipulation. I don't really want to be evil. I stopped being evil after I turned 14. This one is about cognitive biases. As for understanding myself, that's exactly what the book is about. The main focus is on the reader. It's about overcoming your own cognitive biases. We all have many of those.

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 28 Oct 2013, 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.

I hear a lot of NTs complaining that they are bad judges of character which I guess involves reading people so I'm guessing they have issues with it as well.

No, they aren't, many think they are. However, they are still significantly better than most of us, but then again we aren't as bad as we think we are. Wut.

I haven't read the rest of the posts in this thread but I bet you I am the only one who's agreeing with you (I might be wrong, and I hope I am). It seems a lot of Aspies seem to think that NTs are excellent with reading every single social cue they ever come across in their lives and are always 100% accurate. I do observe NTs an awful lot, and I can say they do make mistakes as well at times.

I'm not bad at reading people. I'm quite good at that for an Aspie actually, and usually when I describe a person to other people who also know that person, they agree with me. Like there's this woman who my mum knows but I don't know very well. I only starting recognising her a few weeks ago when my mum said hi to her. And a few times since then I got on the bus with her and she was mildly flirting with the bus-driver and also one or two men on the bus. The flirting wasn't anything obvious, but I just read her body language easily without having to hardly think, then later I said to my mum, ''she flirts a lot, doesn't she?'' and my mum said, ''yeah, she does flirt, she always had done.''

But anyway, that's not the point. Often I have been in situations where NT A is going on about something and NT B is looking bored, not making it too obvious but I noticed, but NT A looks very enthusiastic in what he/she is going on about and carries on like he/she is completely missing the sign that NT B is getting bored. OK I suppose you can argue that maybe NT A knew NT B was getting bored but didn't want to stop. Yes, I have seen this a lot, and I mean a lot.