Personality Distinctions Among People with AS

Post Reply New Topic

I believe personality differences among people diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome can work against friendly relationships with each other just as they can help establish friendly relationships. One important distinction I have noticed is extraversion-introversion. Aspies run the gamut, and this distinction alone can keep two aspies at odds. "A state in which attention and energies are largely directed outward from the self as opposed to inward toward the self, as in introversion." I am pretty shy and normally inhibited and thoughtful, but I also enjoy socializing with others when the situation is comfortable. I also become bored and have trouble passing the time doing things alone because I get less pleasure out of solitary activity. Other people seem to require some alone time even after doing what seems like very little to me. At the other extreme is a person who is stopping to talk to everyone who passes him or her by. I know I have been disappointed to find that a friend rather stay home or just do a couple of things per day and thus not want to hang out with me before.

A somewhat related aspect of personality is anxiety proneness, or neuroticism. People are a more generally anxious tend to worry a lot and become nervous and uncomfortable around strangers and in unfamiliar situations. This is me to a large extent. Other forms of anxiety including perfectionism--worries about the quality of one's decisions and efforts. Some people may become so anxious that they have a panic attack and cannot function at all.

Another personality trait that affects relationships is social conformity. This is led on by another form of anxiety: the compulsion to fit in and be "normal." Some amount of this is, of course, good and necessary. A person completing deficient in this trait would be deliberately defiant, brash, inconsiderate, callous, and so on. A normal amount of this will lead to senseless conformity and a blandly normal life: you know, 1.5 kids, a house with a white-picket fence, a career where one is constantly climbing the ladder of success with no other goal but to adhere to the traditional, materialistic definitions of success. Too much and one is overly self-conscience and shy. Just a little less than normal makes one a bit fun, prone to question authority and tradition, prepared to do things the nontraditional way, freethinking, creative, apt in the use of satire and parody, etc.

Yeah, DSM-IV doesn't seem to account for individual personalities very well and I think that causes problems for some people trying to get a diagnosis. Like me. Also, you left out the possibility of some people being too much alike to get along.

I don't think a person completely lacking in an instinct for social conformity would be defiant or brash and breaking social rules all the time. It has always seemed to me, that in order to break all the rules, a person would have to have a pretty high capacity for conformity, because the person would be being influenced heavily by what the rules are, the same as when someone follows them. Someone who lacked an instinct for conformity would just do their own thing whether it happened to coincide with any particular societal rules or not.

I agree.

As for myself, I fall along the "highly introverted" end of the scale. I am also anxious and/or uncomfortable around new people and new situations. I don't really know how to try to "fit in" but I am overly self-concious, I think. Rather than attempting to fit in it is more natural for me to just try to blend into the background.

Well said, anbuend! I just blunder along, hoping I don't offend the wrong person that day.

I'm not really introverted as much as tired by the blank look I get from most people when I talk to them, or especially when I crack up at something. Or when I'm upset by something.

It's just so much effort to get them on the same plane I'm on. I really value people who find me funny (or who laugh at the same things I do).

It just feels like most social interaction is this 75lb weight I have to lift over and over every day, and I don't get any stronger from doing it. I have to because I work. If I didn't work, I would spend time with the congenial people I know, or be happy on my own.

Most people just don't understand that I really don't miss social interaction. I'm too busy on my own (video games, programming, stimming ), to think about playing with other people.

I just don't care, and I don't know how introverted or extro I am.


I tend to keep to myself, not b/c I am anxious but b/c I get so little out of personal communication and I find holding my end of a conversation/friendship can be more stressful than benefictical for me.

I'm the same way Prometheus. I find friendships difficult because I tend to be very literal and blunt when I have conversations with people. Plus the fact I can't even hold eye contact for more than 5 seconds, I think they believe I'm deceitful, which I'm not.

The whole thing of even having a conversation wears me out!!

So......I just become more reclusive.

<i>". Aspies run the gamut, and this distinction alone can keep two aspies at odds."</i>

I doubt they do. I'm pretty certain there's a strong correlation between introversion and AS. Do you have any evidence this isn't the case?

There are a lot of autistic people who are very social. What their social tolerance is might vary, but many have a preference for a lot of interaction, sometimes to the point of overwhelming other people. For that matter in any given person the level of wanting to socialize vs. not wanting to socialize can vary. Also many autistic people learn to enjoy being alone, not by choice, but because they had to either get used to it or get depressed by it.

Some of the most extremely and unendingly social people I've met have been autistic.

So, yes, I think it really does run the whole range, although there are a number of autistic people who are mostly loners (by choice or by circumstance, or even by circumstances turning into preference and choice, and so forth). What can be different is how socializing happens, not just whether it's wanted. (Also many autistic people who look like they don't want to socialize, really do. A lot of them have been counted as indifferent to social interaction, but are not.)

Introversion dosen't mean you're anti-social. And extroversion dosen't mean you're a social butterfly. It's more about your own thought processes, or how much "energy" you get from others or yourself. It's a somewhat vague term, but it's not all about socialization.

I agree that there are Autistic people who are social. All I'm saying is there's probably a lot more introverts than extroverts.

I definitely fit the 'extroverted' description.

I am very talkative (although I do become quiet and withdrawn when tired or really stressed, or if I have had enough of a social situation and want to go home), and tend to overwhelm people with ideas, questions, and off the wall comments and observations. I have been told that I interrupt a lot (something I thought I had under control, blast it! ) and often go off at a tangent in conversations.

I love socialising. While I find meeting groups of new people, or having one to one conversations with people I don't know very well, extremely hard-going, I relish going out with groups of friends.

Although I have a tendency to make others slaves to my routines and want to plan everything down to the last detail if meeting people, in certain situations I can be impulsive - saying or doing things without considering the potential consequences of my actions.

I also have a very 'short fuse' - very little patience, and a tendency to not think before I act. I'm in my 30s and it ashames me to admit that I am still prone to throwing a tantrum in some situations.

I wonder if the difference between extrovert/introvert in the autistic spectrum is in any way related to the difference between ADD and ADHD, different degrees of executive dysfunction explaining the difference between the quiet introvert thinker, and the impulsive extrovert who acts before thinking. I was diagnosed ADHD as a child.

As I have already said to Neant before (since I think a particular conversation we had prompted this thread), it can also have to do with how the Aspie grows up which either adds to their introversion or extroversion tendencies.

For myself, I was an only child with an incredible amount of time alone, my mother often working nights, few out of school friends, and neighborhoods which would seem to shun me. I prefered my time alone, but often had little other choice. For many years, I lived my after-school afternoons and early evenings losing myself in the woods near our house and befriending cats and other strays.

Human interaction takes an incredible amount of energy from me because it takes a good deal of concentration on my part, especially in unfamiliar situations. I am often times more likely to prefer a good book over any of this, not because I don't find the person enjoyable and intriguing but because I can bear so little of it before my brain shuts off, basically.

In addition, socializing in less familiar situations drains me even faster. And with me usually "less familiar" means anywhere I don't visit at least every other day (e.g., my apartment or my mother's house).

Or asocial. Anitsocial is more being a jerk, asocial is just not interacting. Go abnormal psych!

I am more introverted than most NTs but about average for an Aspie, not reclusive, not super social. I also like to fit in, but I like to fit in with unqiue people!! ! I don't want to "conform," just get along and have fun with other people who have quirks THEY are cool with, and be cool with mine. I'm very lucky that I've had that chance this last year.