Me, an experienced masker: You can’t tell what a person is thinking from their face, they expend a lot of effort keeping their face in a socially acceptable position to hide their true feelings.
This is always what makes me a little unsure of if I have autism. Cause I have very little trouble understanding a person’s feeling from their facial expression. Admittedly I am self-diagnosed, but I also know it’s a spectrum so there’s gotta be a few outliers who don’t struggle with this, right?
Honestly, I think neurotypicals put too much emphasis on facial expression. I can read facial expressions fine most of the time, yeah, but rarely does someone accurately read my facial expression.
People either assume I’m upset (because I’m not actively attempting to emote, such as when I’m thinking about something), or assume I’m happy (because I’m masking - in which case I may look happy, but that doesn’t mean I feel happy.)
Considering that “resting bitch face” has become a known cultural phenomenon, I’m tempted to argue that neurotypicals have as much trouble reading faces as they claim we do. The difference is, if they’re wrong they either don’t recognize it, or double-down because obvs you’re lying for some reason. (You’re autistic after all, they clearly know how you’re feeling better than you do. /s)
Ha yeah I got that resting bitch face too. When I’m feeling just fine I look like someone just kicked my shin with dogpoop-smeared boots. Agree we put way too much emphasis on facial expressions.
I had a test with a short movie, cut scene by scene and each time they asked to explain what happend and what did were thinking. I thought I did good on it, but apparently I didn’t, just too autistic to know.
That’s not even look at a picture of a face, it’s look at a picture of low res eyes cropping out the entire rest of their face. Also that 2nd picture, I couldn’t even see an eye on the right side 🤣
Autism test: Look at this picture of a face, what is this person thinking?
Me, an experienced masker: You can’t tell what a person is thinking from their face, they expend a lot of effort keeping their face in a socially acceptable position to hide their true feelings.
As opposed to the cptsd answer: “what did I do to cause you to show me a bunch of pictures of people who are mad at me”
This is always what makes me a little unsure of if I have autism. Cause I have very little trouble understanding a person’s feeling from their facial expression. Admittedly I am self-diagnosed, but I also know it’s a spectrum so there’s gotta be a few outliers who don’t struggle with this, right?
Honestly, I think neurotypicals put too much emphasis on facial expression. I can read facial expressions fine most of the time, yeah, but rarely does someone accurately read my facial expression.
People either assume I’m upset (because I’m not actively attempting to emote, such as when I’m thinking about something), or assume I’m happy (because I’m masking - in which case I may look happy, but that doesn’t mean I feel happy.)
Considering that “resting bitch face” has become a known cultural phenomenon, I’m tempted to argue that neurotypicals have as much trouble reading faces as they claim we do. The difference is, if they’re wrong they either don’t recognize it, or double-down because obvs you’re lying for some reason. (You’re autistic after all, they clearly know how you’re feeling better than you do. /s)
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Ha yeah I got that resting bitch face too. When I’m feeling just fine I look like someone just kicked my shin with dogpoop-smeared boots. Agree we put way too much emphasis on facial expressions.
I had a test with a short movie, cut scene by scene and each time they asked to explain what happend and what did were thinking. I thought I did good on it, but apparently I didn’t, just too autistic to know.
That’s not even look at a picture of a face, it’s look at a picture of low res eyes cropping out the entire rest of their face. Also that 2nd picture, I couldn’t even see an eye on the right side 🤣