mdlbear | River: Calibration

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River: Calibration

This is an expansion of a topic I raised in this post, where I wrote:

We never did get to do any wine-tasting (though the wine at the wedding was excellent, as one might expect, and made up for the lack). This occasioned an argument, too: I could hear the disappointment in Colleen's voice, but she said "no" when I first asked her whether she was disappointed. A lifetime of social conditioning will do that. But it's disastrous for someone like me who can't read people very well, and has to get accurate feedback when I try to confirm my guesses. I think the normal expectation is that somebody will understand the tone of voice and interpret the polite denial as a subtle request to leave the subject alone. I don't do subtle, and don't trust my ability to "read" people.

In other words, my ability to perceive moods and emotions in other people -- even in myself -- is highly unreliable and inaccurate; I need to calibrate it by getting feedback from people, to see whether my guesses are correct. My ability to understand implicit communication and hints is practically nonexistent. As I've often remarked here, I don't do subtle.

Most people -- "normal" people, as opposed to geeks like me -- appear to rely heavily on one another's ability to read emotions and recognize implied communication. This leads to a social convention whereby a short, polite answer to a question establishes a polite fiction that is often contradicted by an emotional undercurrent that people like me usually miss, leading to total lack of real communication.

So, in the preceeding exchange, we had Colleen giving what I'll call the "social answer" to my question, relying on my (nearly nonexistant) emotional perception to supply the "real answer". Which I still don't fully understand. I understood that she was disappointed, but have no idea what the implied message might have been. "I don't want to discuss it"? "I want to discuss it but only if you want to as well"? "I was disappointed but don't want to get into an argument"? All of the above? Something else? Probably. But I don't think Colleen herself knows, or could give me any help understanding it. It was hard enough calibrating my reading of her mood.

I may never get any good at all at understanding -- or even detecting -- implied messages, but my ability to read emotions is improving, largely because I'm getting a little better at calibrating my readings.

The trick, for me, is recognizing when I'm getting a "social answer", and framing a question or two that will elicit the "real answer". So,

"Are you disappointed?"

"Not really."

"I thought I heard disappointment in your voice. Are you disappointed?"

"Of course I was disappointed. You told me..."

Similarly, take a common social greeting:

"How are you doing?"

"OK."

"You look a little down."

"Well, ... "

What follows the "Well,..." could be anything from "I just haven't had my coffee yet" to "My mother died yesterday" -- the social convention appears to be to give a noncommittal answer and let the other party follow it up if they really care about the person and want the real answer. Or something. I'm still not really sure; all I know is that I have to follow up if I want to get the real answer.

As I say, I'm getting better at this. In other cases I'll try to paraphrase a response that seems to be ambiguous, or request further information when the response seems incomplete. I think that most people find this annoying and perhaps even offensive, but I can't help that -- I need my calibration, my feedback, or I won't understand what they were trying to tell me.

It would be unrealistic and totally unfair of me to ask people to give me a real answer to an ordinary social question. The social answer is what almost all of the people they communicate with are expecting. The social convention serves them well; I'm guessing that it lets the conversation drop before getting into realm of real emotions unless both parties are prepared to go deeper. Basically, it's up to me to figure out when, and whether, I need to follow up.

Similarly, I'm far enough outside most people's normal range of experience that they're almost certain to misunderstand me -- they misinterpret my tone of voice, or look for an implied message that isn't there, and find something I didn't say. They don't follow up, of course. It's up to me to notice when they're misinterpreting what I said, and try to correct it. Often it's too late: I've made them angry or distressed, and they've stopped listening to me. Other times I simply don't notice, and they go off thinking I said something totally different from whatever I actually said.

Public Service Announcement #1: When I say something to you, there is no implied message or hidden meaning. The words I used said precisely what I meant to say, at least if I was at all careful about framing them. If you don't believe me, or don't understand me, or think there was some implied message, ask me.

Public Service Announcement #2: I don't do subtle. If you want to tell me something, use words and say it explicitly and in detail. Don't rely on my ability to pick up hints and hidden assumptions -- I don't have that ability.

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PSA #1 is a broader-painted version of the inverse of something

gridlore and I got in the habit of when he was still Sick: If you ask one of us "How are you?" you're gonna get the unvarnished truth. Doug was a little too busy trying not to DIE to have the time for social niceties. Likewise, unless you're someone I only know professionally, if I ask "How are you?" I expect the truth. (And sometimes even if I only know you professionally.... When Doug and I were still at StupidShuttle, one of our dispatchers was quite clearly making the slow, sad transition from HIV+ to PWA. He came back to work after several days off once, and when he told me he was "fine," I looked him square in the eye and said "That's nice. Now tell me the real answer.")

You have my word that any question you may ask me will be taken at face value, and I will answer it as fully as I can at the time. And if I can't (whether that can't is "I've been sworn to secrecy" or "I'm not comfortable discussing that subject here/now/with you/[FITB]"), I'll tell you so.

Thanks.

I've learned that I can't expect the unvarnished truth from most people unless I probe for it. I'm always delighted when I get it, but most people have decades of social conditioning working against me.

unless you're someone I only know professionally, if I ask "How are you?" I expect the truth

I've been pondering this one at the office.

People ask me "how are you?" I give a half-smile and say "mmmm," while I sort out what kind of "how are you" they mean. Also, many of them I want to answer "that's quite none of your business," but I'm aware that's a Bad Idea at the office. So I buy time with a noncommittal noise while I think.

They nod, and continue breezily going about whatever they were doing when they asked me. I have no idea what the question is for, since they don't want to wait five whole seconds for an answer.

(This ties into a whole bunch of other issues at the office, where I have decided that any subject that doesn't merit 30 seconds of someone else's undivided attention, doesn't warrant any real concern on my part. Sometimes I count to check.)

I don't ask people "how are you?" unless I want to know. I try to avoid that phrasing even when I do want to know, because it's such a strong habit to say "fine" that it can override even seriously important "I am NOT FINE and NEED HELP" answers.

Good point. Have a phrasing that works better?

Nothing specific; it has to tailor to the individual and situation.

"Are you feeling okay?"
"How's your day [week/party/new job] been going?"
"What's on your mind?"
"Anything interesting going on with you?"
"What're you having for lunch?" (You will note this has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of "how are you?" But it's a neutral question, that allows for either a brief, meaningless answer, or an opening for discussion--"I had a burger for lunch because I'm feeling anemic and tired this week" or "nothing, yet; we're so swamped with the McGuffin project I won't get a break until six.")

The key issue is to avoid questions that have programmed standard responses. "How are you" is the worst of these. "How's it going?" is about as bad. So's "Everything okay?"--which is what parents use to check up on children; it triggers a response-pattern of well, I'm not bleeding and nothing's broken or on fire, so everything must be okay.

The 'social convention' explanation is accurate for many people, I suspect, but for some of us who have been badly wounded by interaction with other members of the human race, that reply of "OK" can have another subtext: (Actually, I'm not ok at all right now, but I'm in no condition to figure out if you really want to know how I am or if it was just a meaningless pleasantry, so I'll just try to pretend I'm ok unless you follow up...) That adds another level of complexity to the problem, because it's hard enough to separate social convention from real communication without adding another person's irrational fear/distrust/insecurity into the mix. There are times when having someone dig beyond that initial 'social convention reply' means the world, but how are they to know that?

And since right about now, you're probably wondering who on earth this person is who has wandered in and started blithering - well, we had a nice conversation one morning at ConChord, standing on the mezzanine walkway, discussing your River posts and how valuable I felt the discussions on communication are. I mention this only because, in the course of the conversation, you told me I should sign up for LiveJournal - and for some reason which remains a mystery to me, I actually went and did it.

Hi!!

Good to see you here - I've gone ahead and added you to my friends list, so you'll be able to see my few locked River posts.

Yeah; that subtext seems to be pretty common; OK is generally uninformative. I try to give at least a little more info, a couple of words at least. Somewhere in the range between "surprisingly good" to "pretty bad". More if I know the person who's asking; sometimes they'll get more than they bargained for.

Yeah, I suck at that stuff too. And I prattle on with the truth too. Some times upsets people, like Colleen.
I do hope she does ok with her doctors appointment Thursday. If she was trying to hint that she needed me to go with her, I'm taking My Mother to the doctor's on Thursday and will be unavailable to help her. She never did ask me directly, but hinted she didn't want to go alone.
See that "I don't do social hinting thing very well". It only hit me hours later that she may be trying to do that.

Yeah; figuring out when somebody is hinting is hard. I think she'll do ok; she may find one of her other friends to go with, but since she deliberately picked a date when I wouldn't be around, she can't complain too much.

The 'not really' answer to the 'are you disappointed?' question should /probably/ be read as: 'Yes, I'm disappointed, but I understand that this wasn't something you did deliberately, it was the result of a bunch of circumstances not entirely in any one person's control, and since discussing it right now is unlikely to result in anything changing immediately or getting to go out wine tasting in non-existant time, we will go with the social fiction that all is well so that we can move on to going to the wedding and being happy there in a social sort of way rather than getting everyone more upset by analyzing what went wrong to death right now.'

You can see why 'Not really' might be useful shorthand.

As far as 'How are you?' goes, there are two or three reasons that I will give the polite answer - 1) I read the other person as having asked as a polite greeting and not because they really wanted to know, 2) I do not want to discuss how I am because of some sort of outside circumstances (I'm really down and it's supposed to be a happy occasion, there's a large gathering of people and I don't want to discuss it with some of them, I know that the real answer would take a while and I don't have time, etc.) 3) I am feeling partocularly vulnerable for some reason and don't want to risk falling apart/being poked (intentionally or unintentionally) or some other factor in my own, internal emotional state, or 4) The person asking is someone with whom I do not want to discuss how I actually am pretty much ever. (Certain exes, some of the people who drive me particularly crazy at church or in other communities, someone who has deliberately hurt me or deliberately hurt other people whom I know well, etc.)

On the other hand, even if I answer honestly, the answer is likely to be short, to give people space to back away because they didn't really want an answer or to ask more, but I'm far more likely to say 'sick' or 'nnngh' or 'lousy' or 'tired' rather than launching into a big discussion of what's going on.

Hmm. Trouble is, I don't read shorthand; even if the implied subtext is "don't ask", I'm likely to probe further anyway just to see whether there was a subtext, if I thought I noticed one.

At which point the other person might be grateful that I asked, or might blow up in my face. I have no idea how to tell in advance which will happen.

At that point, I would consider the time available and the occasion. Unless getting a real answer is crucial to what you are going to do next, if you have little time and an imporant social event, I would leave it alone until later. Because you /can/ ask later. Alternately, knowing that 'I don't want to talk about it right now' is one of the likely things that it means, perhaps asking if that is what she means would be helpful. In that, that conveniently gives her a socially acceptable way to say that you can talk about it later, or that she doesn't want to talk about it at all, or that she really /does/ want to talk about it, but wasn't sure that you wanted to.

I do agree that at least saying something like 'I don't really want to talk about it now' would be more helpful, especially when you know that you're dealing with someone who doesn't do subtle. But sometimes social conditioning is strong.

Sometimes "Okay" means "Something is bothering me, but I'm trying to get over it/pull myself together/whatever and I don't really want to talk about it and make it worse."

Or sometimes it just means "I'm not okay, but I don't know/like/trust/whatever you enough to go into detail."

I just have no idea how to distinguish those cases from "I'm not ok and I'm hoping you'll reach out and ask further".

I'm better at handling the social "OK" because it usually is OK to drop the subject; the social "no" to, e.g., "are you disappointed?" is a lot harder because the subtext is usually very important, and I have no way of getting at it without continuing a discussion that the other person might prefer to drop. At least with "OK" the real answer will usually come out if it's somebody who knows me and I have time to continue the conversation.

Here's an ethical question for you: is the social answer dishonest? I don't think so, but I know there are people who classify it as lying.

The answer is situational. Let's take "how are you today?" as an example.

In a business situation, where the need is to establish polite contact and move on to business, "good" is not a lie as long as you mean "good enough to conduct our business"

If a doctor asks, "good" is a lie if you have symptoms, even minor ones.

Of course, those squishy social situations are harder. However, I've found that often I can find something true to say that is pertinent to the person and situation and is not oversharing. Thankfully, some of the context information that you need to decide what someone means by asking "how are you" is logical in nature, or at least can be pegged down by experience with a particular person or group. Body language and facial expression aren't the only clues.

You might find vocal tone more helpful, if you think of another person's words as having a "tune"--is it a happy tune or a sad one or an angry one?

Even so, some people speak in monotones, and many times (for instance) people can be angry about something that has nothing to do with you, yet that still can affect their non-verbal cues while they talk to you.

For the people whose brains naturally "get it" it comes natural. For the rest of us, it's an endless and complicated puzzle.

Personally, I get some things, but miss many. And paradoxically, there's some people that others say they find inscrutable, because they can't "read" their body language, that I read easily.

See downstream; not only do I have trouble reading people, but people -- especially Colleen -- seem to have been frequently wrong in their readings of me. Now that I know that it's happening, I can be a little better at correcting for it before things get totally out of hand. But still...

Yes, knowing there is a problem helps. Then you can use my sister’s “brown sugar” analogy about intelligence—you know, if you don’t have enough brown sugar, you use your honey, or your molasses, or your sucrose, or whatever you DO have plenty of.

I like this, though what I have doesn't seem to be an adequate substitute for real emotional intelligence or whatever it is I lack.

Nor, most likely, would the kind of intelligence you lack be an adequate substitute for what you do have.

But to extend the sugar analogy, though you might not have enough refined white sugar to make an angel food cake, I bet with a little experimentation you can make some pretty good other kinds of cakes.

And with good friends, sometimes they can substitute their white sugar into the mix so together you can make a reasonable angel-food cake, for when that exact kind of cake is the best fit to the need at hand.

A relationship (friendship, marriage, business acquaintance, etc.) cannot be "baked" alone, after all.

Colleen and I manage to complement one another's weak points most of the time, but it's not always smooth going.

I try very hard to be honest, but if I'm not close enough to someone to go into details, I'm not above saying "Ok" - but only if I can think of a way that I am okay. (yeah, my dog died and my house burned down -- but gosh, I got a wonderful cup of coffee on the way in today. And besides, I survived, and I'm not burnt, so I must be okay.) If I'm so far down, that I can't think of a way that I am okay, I'll probably say something like "I've had better weeks".

(BTW, I don't have a dog, the last time I saw my house it was standing, and I don't stop for coffee in the morning (it's free at the office) but I couldn't come up with a real-life example.)

So, the answer I would give to your question is that "if you are completely not okay, and just want the person to go away, it _is_ dishonest (even if the person didn't care anyhow)... but if when you imagine the intersection of your world that you're willing to share with said person, and the person who asked (who probably doesn't really care anyhow, and is just being social), if there is nothing devastating there, and/or there are things that are good, then "ok" is not dishonest.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs... but that's how I see it.

someone who never did social convention, nor ever softened what he wanted to say, in fact usually expressed it in the bluntest/clearest terms possible. If you think that's a utopia, you'd be sadly mistaken. Sometimes it was necessary, sometimes it was useful, more often it was uncomfortable, sometimes VERY.

Perhaps my professional training has served me well to cope with this non-standard upbringing, but I go on a two tier system. If you have a "need-to-know" you get the complete truth, sometimes slightly varnished. "Need to know" socially includes "because you are my friend, and have to understand how I work" If you do not have a need to know, you get the evasive answers upon prying.

To be totally honest, I have no idea whether I was raised by such a person or not: I have no way to tell.

I don't remember either of my parents giving me social answers, but if there were subtexts, I missed them completely.

If you don't know, you weren't. Such a person is VERY clear, and usually terrifies children.

The answer to a different question, I think -- it's possible to be honest and accurate without being brutal and blunt. My father was both the gentlest and most consistently honest person I ever knew. If there was ever a subtext to what he said, I missed it. I don't think there ever was.

But he likely knew how to make "social noise" for "How are you?"

I'm not sure. And I'm not sure I ever did.

I agree completely with your public service announcements. I find it saves many rides on the drama llama when I explain those things to people I am going to be interacting with regularly.

I also get the frequent disconnect where people appear to be speaking an entirely different language, or thinking I am speaking an entirely different language. News flash: I tell the truth. I communicate in plaintext because that is really all there is. There isn't any more. The chances are extremely good that nothing else is going on in my head than what is coming out of my mouth. If you are making shit up in your head about what I must "really" mean when I tell you something, stop doing it. You are almost certainly wrong, and you are going to annoy me and make me think that you are a goofball.

When I become aware of your bizarre belief about what I am "really" saying, I am going to look at you funny. I will have no idea what you are talking about because I thought I was having a perfectly sane, rational and truthful exchange with a reasoning adult. Then suddenly I am talking to a primitive tribesperson who believes that I have blasphemed the magic name of their mighty god Ooot-Squat, and I must perform rituals of placation. Depending on my tolerance level, I may attempt to perform your weird tribal rituals to make you feel better, or I may explain carefully, as if to a small child, that what I meant was *exactly* what I said, and I really didn't intend to insult your god because frankly I never heard of the guy. Either way, I'm probably gonna think that you're mentally impaired, hard of hearing, stupid, or totally crazy and making shit up for drama, and I will proceed to avoid you if I possibly can.

I actually am aware that this is a normal behavioral consequence of one set of Homo sapiens brain wiring clashing with a very differently evolved set, and that most likely neither person involved in the interaction is stupid or crazy. We just have crossed behavioral signals, not unlike two related but different subspecies of songbirds. That doesn't stop it from being annoying, and really something I prefer to avoid.

Difficult or impossible to avoid; the trick is to notice when it's happening and take immediate steps to uncross the signals. It's unreasonable to expect 90% of the world to change their habits, and I don't want to cut myself off from them.

*nods* For better or worse, my brain wiring is such that as soon as someone identifies themselves as the kind of incomprehensible chattering monkey who is incapable of communicating with me like a sane and rational sentient being, they ring a bell in my brain as "not my species" and I largely do stop caring. I can try to pretend that I care, and go through the motions to avoid even more annoying drama, but I really can't relate emotionally to people who think that way. So unless there is a practical reason for continuing to relate, I do prefer to cut myself off from anyone who cannot be consistently sane and rational when they talk to me.

I think the real tragedy of Asperger's/autism is when you have enough of the wiring broken to mess up your relations with neurotypicals, but not enough of it broken to really not care. I got dealt a fairly lucky hand, I imagine. I like how I'm wired, though it does come with some obstacles and handicaps for which I need to put extra energy into hacks and workarounds. I don't particularly mind being unable to relate to the unwashed masses. I can fake it if I want to, but I really don't want to, and I've worked hard to arrange my life so that I don't have to.

My now-ex once said to me that “no one ever says exactly what they mean.” Since my tendency with anyone I trust and am not filling a specific limited role for is to say what I mean as clearly as I can, I’d have to say that this mismatch accounts for a lot of screwed-up communication with him.

Public Service Announcement #2: I don't do subtle. If you want to tell me something, use words and say it explicitly and in detail. Don't rely on my ability to pick up hints and hidden assumptions -- I don't have that ability.

There's probably a joke in here about the Y chromosome...

I don't think it has much to do with gender. Yeah, men are more likely to be geeky than women, but I've known enough female geeks and loners to know that they're not at all unusual.

I'm female, I suck at subtle. Then again, I'm a geek. So I do have "male" attributes.
You should have seen the high school counselors trying to deal with a FEMALE who was good at math, science, mechanical aptitude. Sucking at any social attribute including language subtleties. They had NO idea what to do with me. :)

In some ways it sounds like you're describing me. I don't tend to do subtle. I do tend to give honest answers.

I _may_ say "ok" to someone at work, if I judge the person who asked how I was to be someone with whom I would not discuss my problems. Ok being somewhat more polite than "nothing going on I'd want to discuss with you" and less likely to create bad feelings. (I am a "T", not an "F", but I've learned by making a set of mistakes.)

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River: Calibration

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