"Nice" signals

And here's my deep thoughtful post for the week. I posted a version of this as a comment on someone's LJ, and thought it would make a good post of its own.

Basically, there's a very fascinating and informative blog post here, by a person on the autism spectrum who talks about being misunderstood because of an inability to give off "I-am-nice signals." While the post is mainly talking about signals that can be given over the internet (nuances in the wording of a sentence, for example) it's also very much of an issue with signals in body language.

As a person with Asperger's Syndrome, I can certainly relate... but my problems are a bit different. Personally, I'm the kind of Aspie who only has mild difficulty with giving off and perceiving "nice" signals, and I guess I have actually become kind of dependent on perceiving them when dealing with non-autistics.

What I mean is that non-autistics (and many autistics) often say things they don't mean (like "I want to kill him")... but when non-autistics say these things, they will give off fewer "nice" signals depending on how angry they are. So, you often can't tell what people mean by their words (usually the person who says "I want to kill him" doesn't really want to kill anyone)... but when people say words that seem angry, you can usually tell how angry they are by noticing how much or how little they laugh, smile, etc. while saying it.

If a coworker says something like "You brought peanut butter cookies in to work on a day I wasn't there, and you know how much I love your peanut butter cookies! You're so awful!"... there will probably be a lot of smiles and laughs along with those words, and I'll understand that the coworker is not really mad at me. But if a coworker says something like "Why did you go on break while there was still work to do? We didn't get the work done on time!" ...then there will be an overall absence of "nice" signals, and I will know the person's mad at me for real. This is the way the system usually goes, in theory.

Interestingly, there are both "friendly" signals (smiles, laughs, raised eyebrows) and "angry" signals (frowns, bared teeth, lowered eyebrows)... but while an absence of "friendly" signals is often a sign of anger, an absence of "angry" signals is often not a sign of friendliness. Angry people often hide their anger signals, but people who are being friendly usually do not hide their friendly signals. So, in non-autistics, a total absence of facial expression is usually a sign of anger, not friendliness.

So I'm somewhat guilty of making the kind of assumptions that "Ballastexistenz" complains about: When I'm talking to a stranger who doesn't give off many "nice" signals, I tend to assume that they're angry at me, because that's what is usually true for non-autistics. But then, sometimes, I observe this person for a long time, and notice that I'm seeing the same absence of "nice" signals whether we're talking about something serious like a badly-timed break or something silly like a badly-timed batch of peanut butter cookies. Then I realize that there are two possibilities: Either I have offended this person in the past without realizing it, and so they're mad at me all the time... or they're the kind of person who just doesn't use much body language.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty paranoid about making social mistakes and causing people to have grudges against me, and so usually my first assumption is that the person is mad at me all the time because of some unwitting wrong I have committed against them in the past. And I'm really scared of conflict, so I will tend to be afraid of such people for a long time.

There are a few cases, currently, in which I am just beginning to realize that the people in question probably don't really have anything against me, they're probably just not very expressive people. I'm working on getting over my fear of them. It's hard.

Interestingly, I don't differentiate much between men and women on this subject. There are people of both sexes who scare me because their facial expressions don't change while talking to me. It's true that, in our society, men can get away with an absence of friendly body language more than women can-- but as a matter of fact, I tend to get along better with men who do give off a lot of friendly body language (my husband is an Aspie whose mannerisms have often been called "feminine").

So, even though I do have some mild difficulties of my own in figuring out body language, I have become somewhat reliant on it when dealing with non-autistics, because the words they speak often don't say anything at all about what they're really feeling, and body language is the only way to figure out what they are feeling. And when I meet someone who seems otherwise normal but doesn't use much body language, I'm usually out of my depth for a while.

(ETA: I used the word "autistics" in the above paragraph when I meant "non-autistics." I've changed it now. Sorry if it confused you.)