This is one of a series of discussion posts based on questions from the AQ-10 autism test.
10. I find it difficult to work out people’s intentions.
- Definitely Agree
- Slightly Agree
- Slightly Disagree
- Definitely Disagree
Is this statement true for you? Can you think of any examples? Is it an easy or difficult question for you to answer?
You can take the full AQ-10 test here. Note this test is intended as a quick screener, and cannot diagnose or rule out any condition on its own.
First post in this series
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I hate this type of question. I don’t know whether I have trouble working out people’s intentions because my mental (and physical) health has me isolated socially. I don’t interact enough with people irl to know, I’ve been a loner basically all my life. Same for stuff like “do people frequently say X about you” - people don’t say anything about me, let alone frequently or to my face.
It’s really frustrating sometimes, especially when you’re trying to get any diagnosis because these questionnaires don’t take social anxiety into account.
For those ‘people often say…’ questions, there’s huge cultural variations in how acceptable it is to even talk about one’s personal traits. ‘people say I am very blunt’ - sorry I don’t know anyone blunt enough to say that.
In your case, I think you’d answer Agree for this question. It’s not up to you to tease out if it’s the result of condition X or condition Y. And your health provider shouldn’t be making that determination based purely on which option you picked on a self-report questionnaire.
But do I “agree”? Maybe I’m very good at figuring out other people, I just haven’t had enough opportunity to test it and come to any conclusions about my ability. I’m definitely overthinking this, as I usually do, because I probably don’t fully understand the possible implications of answering “agree” or “don’t agree” and I hate not understanding.
Definitely. Especially as I’ve begun trying and failing to date more and find a partner. I just can’t tell if someone likes me or is just being friendly. There have been a number of occasions where a woman had no interest in a romantic relationship with me but expected me to figure it out from nonverbal cues alone. Many people don’t want to be dicks, so everything they do, they do with an air of friendliness. But since I can’t pick up on the subtle cues, I end up just naïvely thinking they like me because they are being friendly.
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We already had a question about reading subtext, so I guess this one is more about the underlying motivations.
Anyway in the for column, there’s been times when I’ve been scammed or taken advantage of. And I’ve had some “[years later]… Ohhh! She was flirting with me” moments.
In against, I think I’m not bad at spotting when someone is masking distress or discomfort (tho I don’t always know what to do with that information). And out of meatspace, with time to process, I’m much better at spotting bad actors.
Going for Slightly Agree
I guess this one is about interpreting vague questions or demands?
It’s not hard to work out normally - I just ask a ton of questions.
One weird trick…
One trick that marks you as werid?
In honesty I should probably say “definitely agree” since I have to constantly ask people more questions than they are expecting, or be completely lost.
