Is it an Aspie trait to see the world in black and white?

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For example, I can't see why someone would describe another as a good person if that individual constantly does something he or she deems evil or abhorrent.

That person is just stupid then. I doubt anyone would understand that.


EDIT: Or that person just doesn't realize how bad that person really is because he or she hasn't seen it. Or that person is just as bad as that other person.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 19 May 2009, 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To answer the question in the thread title, Yes.


Or rather, Absolutely

The answer is yes. I've read literature on the subject. That is why sometimes women are diagnosed borderline personality when they are really asperger's. People with borderline personality also see the world in black and white, with no shades of grey.

However, as I have gotten older, I've seen a lot more grey. I think my development of it has just been slower.

I think experience and a desire to change can help speed the process up, or at least it did for me.

The comment on this that appeared in my mind after I read the title was: "No, that's the trait of a severe form of daltonism". Lol.

Thinking in extreme terms is a trait of anti-social personality disorder(ASPD). People who think in black and white constantly perceive minor things to be some sort of threat.

If I remember right, black-and-white thinking is a classic Aspie trait.

I'm still undiagnosed, but for what it's worth, I do mostly think in black and white, though I recognise the existence of grey, and know it's valuable.

I still tend to see people as angels or demons, though I enjoy films in which the hero is flawed or the villain has a good side. I do see the good side of people who I class as overall bad, and vice versa. Just that I have trouble seeing it like that all the time. So if I see a person doing something I deem to be rotten, I have a powerful urge to shun them or challenge them. For example, it's hard for me to feel any warmth towards somebody I know to have been unfaithful to their partner, or significantly cruel in any other way. There are others who I've labelled as somehow admirable because they've been noble or just done things I approve of, and that somehow sticks so that I seem to overlook the bad in them.

It's more a feeling than an intellectual thing, and often it's a case of first impressions throwing a switch that's hard to throw back the other way - e.g. John Lennon, intellectually I know he was deeply flawed, but because I saw the good in him first, I couldn't really dislike him even when I discovered the bad. Of course intellectually I know that there are no true heroes or villains, and as soon as I see anybody admiring a guru, I automatically want to find fault with the object of their admiration.

But I'm black and white in a lot more than moral sensitivity. I can't tackle a job without wanting to do it absolutely perfectly. I can't fill in a form and ignore bits of it, every box has to be filled in, if I have to tick a box saying I've read the terms and conditions, I have to read and understand every word of them before I feel OK about ticking that box. I've seen other people just tick the box and not read the stuff. I have a hard time just fudging things like so many people seem to. How do they know which bits of a required task are important and which aren't, when there's no definitive formula or book that tells them clearly? Sometimes I can do this fuzzy judgement thing, and I'm convinced of the benefit of it, but mostly it seems so risky and lazy.

I need absolute certainty about who I see myself to be and what the world is - of course that never happens - I recall reading that normal people live in the assumptive world, and I thought "that's horrible!" When people jump to conclusions and state guesses as known facts, I get very impatient. I want everything they say to be completely objective, so if they say "X is a great book," I want them to do it right and say "I enjoyed reading X." I make mistakes like that myself sometimes, and always want to go back and correct them.

I recognise a lot of what you say, ToughDiamond, especially concerning wanting to remember the grey areas of morality but still leaning toward either black or white if push comes to shove... And the perfectionism too. For me it manifests in traffic, for example. I have a hard time trying to understand why ANYONE would want to violate the rules of the road: walking a red light or running a red light in a car, cycling on the sidewalk... those kind of minor things. It just annoys me to see so many little violations almost every day, when - in my view - it would serve harmony if everyone just was perfectly courteous in traffic.

Of course, seeing all this happen causes me to get disheartened, and not wanting to bother with laws at all, because if so many people ignore them on a daily basis, then why would I try? And that's the flip side of the black-and-white medal.

It surely depends on how you define "constantly does something he or she deems evil or abhorrent."

For a random example, off the top of my head, a Christian fundamentalist pro-life type person might think that a liberal pro-choice type person is doing something that they consider to be evil or abhorrent, i.e. supporting abortion.

But can't that pro-choice person be an otherwise good person, if they're kind and considerate to their family members and friends and colleagues, if they devote time and donate money to 'good causes' and so on?

Does being pro-choice make them a bad person, because of one particular aspect of their beliefs, or can they be a good person overall, taking into account all their good deeds and good intentions?

No it's not possible, donating money to "good causes" doesn't allow someone to murder babies. The person is clearly evil, the person should goto jail for condoning such a horrendous act.

That would be my reply if i didn't think about it, i constantly have to remind myself that i don't percieve something that others are able to. I just have to have "faith" that others are right when they tell me someone can be good and bad at the same time. Still, it causes no end of problems since i have no idea when i should apply this "faith".

Oh yeah, it is a trait that is very typical for Aspies.
In my first 20-25 years I saw the world as absolutely black and white. Only recently have I seen that sometimes there are grey areas. Not everything is absolute.
But I am unable to view things from other's point of view or truly question mine.

If a fictional character - be it book or movie - is unsympathetic IMO (it doen't have to be something everyone would find despicable, but it must be to me) I just lose interest. For instance I started reading a horror novel by Simon Clark (Nailed by the heart?), in which there was a family consisting of parents and their little son. Now at one point in the novel the little boy's gold fish dies. When the parents notice, they were on their way into sexland. One of them said something about darn fish for dying and that they should replace it before they flushed it, and then went at eachother. I was so disgusted I put the book in the garbage where I still think it belongs. Couldn't finish it. I can't root for people so uncaring for both for their child and the poor pet. WTF wants sex when a beloved pet has just died?

But the weird thing is that if the protagonist is very saintly, that annoys me, too. And when the villain is described as pure evil, I just roll my eyes. It's a bit confusing! For instance that case in the news with that Austrian father who raped his daughter and locked her up. (Fritzl?) Reporters called him a monster, which I found very unprofessional. Yes, what he did was very bad, but demonising him is just ludicrous. Fritzl is a human male who committed a terrible crime. Demonising him and others like him just derails the debate and I also think it is dangerous, as it leads to thinking in terms of us/them. We couldn't do something like that, but they could.
At one point they were part of "us" and "we" didn't have a clue about their other life. Delusions about who "they" are will only lead to other victims not getting the help they need.

Anyway, the AS world is very black and white, including my.

I tend to see certain scenarios on the good vs bad part. The whole us vs them view seems quite primitive (especially when used as an angle in British tabloids).

Like a religious person who attends church/mosque/synagogue etc,,, frequently could also be a serial killer, while someone from a council estate who abuses drugs could also be caring and honest at time.

So for me I dont like to see people as either good or bad.

Ah yes, I forgot about my traffic attitudes - there's this pelican crossing, the lights go green for the pedestrians and they can't cross because there's always some selfish driver can't be bothered to keep it clear.....he must get at least 5 feet closer to home by doing that. It's not just one driver, barely any of them respect that crossing any more. But that's a more rational example - the pedestrians do suffer as a result.

Jumping lights, I do that on the bicycle sometimes, as long as I'm sure it's safe, but if I see a car doing it, I get angry.

I suppose I'm a hypocrite, I break the rules but I hate it when others do it. On the other hand, I long for a world in which others would stick to the rules, and I think I'd mend my ways, if habit hasn't ruined me by now. But I'm not going to stick to the rules while everybody else is disregarding them, that way I go down while they go up. There's no traffic police any more, only speed cameras, so they get away with it, so they do it, and they'll never get the punishment they deserve for it.

One thing I won't do is the discourtesy thing though - the way they just carve somebody else up, pull out in front of them, yell at them just because they want to get through. I might do that to somebody who's being aggressive themselves, but I hope I'll always show courtesy to the innocent.

Don't get me started on pavement parking and those loud music systems.

ditto to whitetiger.
I am learning to become more moderate in some areas of my thinking, although my natural tendency is always a black and white view. i work consciously to check on it. it also relates in with ToM issues too, i think.

Look at it this way: we see a black and white world, and we explain it to people in color.

the gray area NTs always talk about? Simply the smoke and mirrors trying to cover it up