Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : I was diagnosed as an adult with autism spectrum disorder and schizoid personality. Schizoid personality basically means that I experience a restricted range of emotions and have what's known as a blunted affect, what emotions I do experience are to a much lesser extent than what is typical. Also, whatever part of the brain that makes social interactions a smooth and reflexive "stimulus and response" affair for most people seems to be nonfunctional in my particular brain.

Every one of my social interactions cause me to have to think about every response I make, nothing flows naturally. This is rather mentally taxing, with conversations being more like puzzles. But one benefit of never reacting to others based on my internal brainstate is that I can instead tailor my responses based on my understanding of the other person's internal brainstate. I can react to others based on what they need to hear rather than based on what I need to say, and I'm pretty well practiced at deciphering what people need to hear.

I spent my formative years dealing with an abusive father, so my wellbeing was based on how he was feeling at any given time. I got really good at reading any subtle indicators that would clue me in to how he was feeling, including things as subtle as the sound of his footsteps. Because of this, I got quite good at reading people and their body language. I've also found that personality traits tend to cluster together in entire constellations of traits, and recognizing one can allow me to intuit the presence of the others, with a good degree of accuracy.

Most people feel under-appreciated, and I've no shame about expressing appreciation so I do it all the time, even though I'm not really feeling it. Making myself the source of someone's validation and appreciation creates a dependency and keeps my interactions with that person positive and stress free. Many people are starved for it. 

I'm always outwardly positive, appreciative, and validating of other people around me because it's just as easy for me to be that way as it is for me to be any other way. In conversation with people I mirror their emotions about the things they care about. It's not real but it makes them feel good, and gives them a positive feeling about me. I know this is manipulative, but anything I do or say would be a show, I'm basically a tabula rasa. I don't feel badly about this but I'm curious about other people's perception of this when I lay it all out as honestly as I'm able.

I think all animals are evolved to take maximum advantage of their environment which includes people, and our inherited social behaviors are how we evolve to take maximum advantage of the other people in our environment. With me I think there's just no layer of emotional programming obfuscating this fact. So AITA for faking my way through social encounters entirely based on the end result I prefer?