So since emotions enhance your aura on the astral plane, how do you think that a Psychopath's or Sociopath's aura appears since they have a marked disconnect to many emotions.

I might describe them as appearing black and white on the plane, with color only appearing when they actually did have an emotional reaction.

Sociopaths have emotions too, they just aren't the social norm.

The clash of their emotions compared with those surrounding them may pick them out as... morally flexible.

Plaid.

Pink, with a hint of wintergreen flavor.

Well, one of my real life friends is supposedly slightly psychic and claims to see auras.

She describes me as primarily blue, which I've been told tends to reflect a calm, ordered personality.

One other girl we know is borderline sociopathic and her aura was described to me as 'black, with yellow spots'.

The psychic girl doesn't like to be around the sociopath.



-karma

My friends who see auras see the colors differently (even "see" is a relative term). They generally don't agree on what a given color means (since the meaning + color vary from person to person), but they all agree Black = Bad. Only 1-2 of them know someone with a "Black aura," and that person is a really bad person from all accounts. (They avoid that person.)

I was alternately described as black and white striped or checkered. Whatever it meant.

I had a (now-ex) manager tell me my "Aura was Dark." As the only male who worked at the New Age/Occult store in question, boy did THAT one stick around at work. Years later I told a friend, and she said "Oh yeah, it is. It's Dark Green." Totally different conotations there.

And I've never heard of a striped one before. That's interesting. (No idea what it is "meant" to mean though.) As mentioned, I've never known two people who supposedly see auras agree on color meanings. (New Age books are close-ish, but it apparently just depends on the person. Red can be jealously, love, or rage, depending on the person and their background.)

Well, one said it reminded her of a chessboard and the other said it gave him the sense of the white strips on the road. And I had thought auras were a glow around a person they could somehow perceive, not shapes or anything specific. Oh well...

Maybe a bit dull and somewhat disconnected from what they physcally express/fake, but nothing blatantly noticeable - that's what Assensing is for...

Blue and purple here, emotion and protection apparently.
Found that out one night back in college. Weird girl I hung out with told me, she smoked pot a lot, once thought she was pregnant because an 8 ball told her.

Of course the freaky thing that happened that night, which I would have written off to a proximity high if she wasn't smoking a regular pack at the time, was when we both saw a hazy blue aura bubble form around the tree we were sitting under, about 10-15feet wide.

I've been told my aura changes with my pretended moods. For what that's worth.

I'm also a bit mad if that helps with the original question of assensing abnormal mental types.

Don't worry, we're ALL a bit mad here.

... would you like some tea?

Toturi, what they actually "see" apparently varies from person to person. (Which, when reading the boards, I have a feeling I cope a bit better than some people with regards to what "Astral Perception" is ingame.)

I know a person who apparently saw visible light. Several people I know ...saw, kinda, colors (but it wasn't "see" so much as percieve). Probably an equal number of people I know just get impressions, which they interpret at colors (whether they percieve it as a color, or whether they symbolically assign a color I don't know). I think I know one person who "tastes" auras (nothing creepy; it just comes through as a taste sensation), and a couple who "feel" auras.

Most (simple majority I would say) people I know in those circles never interact with auras (for whatever reason, like they simply don't see/percieve them). Most people I know do get "vibes" about people, though; I'm not sure whether one would call that a different sense, or whether it's just another way of interpreting "auras."

And now I feel a little like a Shadowland poster. (I wish there was a smiley, eye rolling "smiley." This one looks so annoyed.)

Sounds legit!

Of course it could be faked (people want to feel special), and people almost always tell stories slanted in their favor. With that said, I never met the "black aura" people, but from what I heard as examples I really don't want to make their aquantance. *half shrug*

I just attribute it to pheromones being interpreted by the subconscious and expressed through a limited synesthesia...

It sounds almost legit that way.

Sociopathy, aka anti-social personality disorder, is not the inability to feel emotions. It is actually a complete lack of empathy. Sociopaths treat other people like objects because they can't grasp that other people feel emotions or pain. The only emotions they understand are their own, and they can't understand why hurting people to get what they want is wrong.

But when I say understand, I think they can understand it logically. When someone feels pain, a sociopath knows that they're feeling pain. What they lack is the empathy, the part of emotion where you see someone else's pain, and you kind of feel it yourself, you implicitly get what's happening to them, and so you probably feel bad. They simply don't have that.

They also tend to be unable to foresee the consequences of their actions. From what I've studied, I think it's based on a lack of empathy for their future selves. Their lack of empathy goes so far that they can't even empathize with who they're going to be tomorrow. To them, that's some other guy who doesn't matter. And then when the consequences roll around, they find it very unfair that they're being punished for what their past self did. They can't empathize with their past self, he doesn't feel like a human being, he's just another object, not the same as the sociopath's current self.

Anyway, I don't think sociopaths would have any problem aura reading. They can understand logically that other people have feelings. "He is scared" is not gibberish to them, they understand statements like that. The only thing they lack is the empathy, the emotional response that tells them the significance of another person's emotions.

The question was more, "would a dude's aura be different if he couldn't empathize" rather than, "can a person who can't empathize read auras."

The answer is, pretty much, no.

I pretty much agree here. There might be something you could ascertain with a high threshold though. Empathy (something which I am sure I lack significant portions of, or is incorrectly wired, as I can't read people's emotions easily, but I do recognize people as people) with respect to auras might be "visible" as subtle reflections of other auras: a person who feels another's pain would have pain show up as an echo in their own aura. Someone who doesn't empathize would lack that.

That's what I was thinking - the aura probably wouldn't look any different except under assesing. I suppose it depends on weather or not you consider sociopathy, and mental illnesses in general, to be diseases. Diseases can be detected using assensing, with a threshold of 3 for a general idea and 5 for an accurate diagnosis. I see no reason why you couldn't detect mental illnesses just as well as physical ones, but each GM would have to make their own ruling.