Can Asperger people become emotional manipulators?

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Sure. Nothing surprises me anymore what aspies can do. I have seen aspie trolls, aspie bullies, aspie manipulators, aspies being as*holes, aspies being ignorant about aspie traits, and an aspie playing games in court with the judge to alienate her son from her ex by using manipulation and taking her ex's posts from here to use against him in court. So an aspie being a emotional manipulator wouldn't surprise me and I would think it's possible.

i think it stems from the fact there's no innate good or bad, once you decide to become amoral, you can push justification beyond and beyond what NT's consider unpalatable. those examples seem extreme, but i imagine because there's no backlash, the "scott tenorman" example, which is fictional, is quite palatable,

i'd choose not to be sociopathic, because it sounds like too much work to maintain, but if it was part of my job, i might have to work at it.

then again, i learned to sell knives, door to door as my first real job (sigh)

once you get over those tactics, and your own phobias and anxieties, you meet all kinds of human examples of success and sociopathy and it rubs off on you, as to how far you can go. or become. Sales, is confronting, but if you're good, the mask you put on to deal with people, can do quite a lot more harm if you realise what people do and are. it makes me deeply uncomfortable to start a conversation i know is going to be deceptive, but i can also lie like a champion now.

i.e. "Hey, i understand, i used to think the sky was blue, but really, the sky is green, just look at it, it's sort of blue, but not really blue. yeah ? my friend james here, took a great photo, can't you see the green in it now ? just there. have a look. see how it looks kind of green, and when you think about it, it's always been green, right ? i can't believe other people can't see the green in the sky as well, right ? we can laugh about this now, and how amazing is that, the sky, being green, right ?"

i just can't maintain the passivity or the ruthlessness for long enough to be successful, or friendly, or emulate NT tactical approaches. i can do it, it's just mindless to do it, and drains you over time.

however, the most dangerous aspect i've found, is core belief. if you spend enough time, you can route yourself into sociopathy, to believe anything, which makes you able to convince people of anything at all. of course its easy to manipulate people. NT people barely spend any time working on emotional recognition in others, they assume everyone sees the world they do, and that makes them dependent on others to agree with them, and think, for them.

confidence, sells truth and untruth. all it takes is a brief tweak to push someone into an emotional state to make choices you want them to make, and there really is six/20 words, to create an emotional state, or create a state of fear and anxiety in people who have no training or exposure to emotional manipulation.

sociopathy, good or bad, is relatively easy, but hard to maintain for aspie's, because it also requires constant presence and upkeep, much like any relationship. as for guilt, the problem of dealing with NT's means we have to put up a face that NT's can understand. once you learn that, you can unlearn it and make it into something else too...

that's the only way that i can fathom behaviour in my mind, that NT people have this capacity to project and not absorb emotional states, they don't need the full gamut of relative empathy, they redirect it to another persona that can feel, and swap personas in public and private, work and social environments, etc. i can only envy my sister who has about 8 faces she doesn't even really recognise, her voice, hair and face muscles change, makeup changes, clothing, vocab, etc. other people, have less, and some have more.

The person who's likely manipulated me the most is an aspie. (Likely because I'm not sure if others have manipulated me more while I was more naive and unable to identify it.) I consider him having purposefully manipulated me and not purposefully abused me.


I'd say that not only autistic people can manipulate people, but there are particular areas where they are more likely to end up manipulating you than others. When you combine these, it can be a huge mess.

My ex boyfriend was a emotional manipulator and he was aspie. I had learned that over time. I am also realizing just now he was a narcissistic. If not, he had some qualities or behaviors that mimicked it.

I don't know about others, but I can certainly be manipulative, I just generally don't care enough about what's going on around me to bother. When its too my advantage somehow I can manipulate situations, events and people to get what I want, but I generally try not to take too much advantage because I try to live an ethical life.

I think the only limitation of an Aspies ability to manipulate someone else is (aside from ethics or morality) their ability to understand that person's emotions and motivations and their ability to effectively communicate and use those as levers to position them to your best advantage. While we can be at a disadvantage at understanding an individuals feelings or motivations, I myself am a student of human nature and psychology (as I suspect are many others)--largely in an effort to understand and better fit in with the people around me--so if I'm trying to manipulate someone I generally try to take advantage of human nature, though it is easier the better you know someone and how they react to a given stimuli.

Also to our advantage in manipulation is that we can come at issues or problems from odd directions and see things others don't and use those connections to convince someone of your point. Basically confusing them with logic problems and making them confront a slightly skewed perspective which places their own off balance where you can take advantage of them.

The problem (besides the moral and ethical issues) is that its a difficult skill to learn as reading social situations and cues can be difficult and when we get it wrong it can be pretty disastrous. Also, it can be difficult to hide the fact that you were manipulating them and that causes resentment even if you weren't taking extreme advantages.

Aspies generally have poor social skills and are usually blunt and straightforward. They often lack the subtleties of emotional skills in order to successfully manipulate others. If they do try to manipulate other people it is so obvious it backfires and they end up getting laughed at themselves!

What may seem to be manipulative behaviour, outbursts, passive aggression may not be manipulative at all. It may be genuine confusion at being unable to express themselves in a way that other people will understand.

Anyone can.

(Thank you, for your patience, as I reformat.)

You're dealing with emotion as a dynamic force in action, not as a mechanism or system of rules.

The NT human is a creature of instinct and habit, and can be controlled in much the same respect as a predatory animal, assuming you know it's physical reflexes.



When you see these exhibits, keep in mind that the handler has an advantage, in that he is mentally detached. The animal is going through these routines, as though it is real life.