Per the coaxing of my Dad, I just started taking Zoloft a couple weeks back.
I’m cured, fam!
wanna apologize yet again for my rage-and-regret cycling.
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YES THIS. It is so important to me to have focus. I need these boundaries or I will do that dumb thing of trying to do multiple things at once.
Brene Brown once said something like, “Give yourself the gift of focusing on one thing at a time.” It is a gift I give to myself as often as possible now.
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The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test is a test of mental state recognition where participants are required to match the mental state of a person, shown in a photograph of their eye regions with one of four mental state words.
Difficulties in aspects of social cognition such as emotion recognition and “theory of mind” (the ability to imagine other people’s thoughts and feelings and to use such information to make sense of and predict another person’s behavior) can cause difficulties in social interaction and these in turn contribute to some mental health conditions.
One important mechanism we use to understand and respond to others is paying attention to the eye region of the face. This is because the eyes convey information about the emotions, thoughts, desires, goals, and intentions of individuals.
Interestingly, in individuals with borderline personality disorder scores on the Eyes test may score higher compared to typical individuals, perhaps because of elevated attention to negatively valenced emotional stimuli because of a history of trauma linked to neglect or abuse.
So I went here and took the test.
For a bit there, I was worried I would find out I’m terrible at reading people, but I’m about average with a score of 30/36.
Participants are asked to choose which one of the four words best describes what the person in the photograph is thinking or feeling. To guard against differences in vocabulary among the participants, a glossary of all words is provided, which participants are invited to use should they find a word difficult to understand. In this way, performance on the test should reflect social cognition, not verbal ability. Each correct response is awarded 1 point, resulting in a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 36.
Interested if anyone takes/has taken the test.
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I got 28. I’m surprised I got so many right. I think I got most of the negative ones, which was not surprising. But some are kind of dumb. Like one option is “irritated” and the other is “hostile” and it could be either one from the face.
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scored 30, i was unsure about most though so not sure how i got 30 lol
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16 out of 36.
Interesting! May I ask if you are diagnosed as neurodivergent? Or what you think the explanation is?
I’m curious whether the national average will go up with masks preventing us from seeing anything but a person’s eyes for expressiveness.
I’ve never been formally diagnosed with a neurodivergent condition, but it’s clear to me that I perceive the world differently from most people.
I’m not a visual person. I don’t react as well to visual social cues. I can be a bit face blind. I don’t pay as much attention to people’s facial features. I can’t tell you the color of the eyes of people I meet. As a live poker pro, I pick up more on body language below the neck than facial expressions in sensing strength or weakness.
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25/36. Surprised I scored that high because I rarely felt confident that I was selecting the correct answer.
Picking up on social and interpersonal communication cues has always been relatively difficult for me. It’s part of why when I started with my current GF three years ago that I told her point blank: “Don’t rely on subtlety when communicating with me. Please, be explicit. You can drop a hint multiple times, and I still won’t pick up on it.”
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31/36
Interesting. What then would you say are your strengths and weaknesses? How has this obstacle driven you to develop other skills? Particularly given the imo high-level insight you frequently offer.
In the docuseries Love on the Spectrum, one of the people said their autism means they have a gift that allows them to intensely focus on one thing at a time. I thought that was cool and a healthy way of framing a self-concept others may see as a weakness or disadvantage.
I would have bet a lot of money on you scoring over 30.
Not sure it all means much. The idea there is a right answer seems a little odd given the contents of the test.
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The most interesting parts were the lead up and follow up and not the actual eyes.
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I guess my perception of you is that you are someone that interacts well and with empathy for others IRL. So, even though the test is limited in it’s scope, at minimum it could correlate to someone who is adept at social interaction.
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Appreciate that. I’d say I have too much empathy in fact. My girlfriend laughs at me cause it takes nothing for me to tear up. Lol
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32/36
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33/36 
I haven’t taken it. If I do I wouldn’t be surprised if I scored either relatively low or high. Probably not average. Eye contact feels quite intense even with people I know well.
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37/36 and I did the test with my eyes closed.
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