Many people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder will appear to be outspoken and opinionated. While it could be argued that everyone is opinionated, it is usually only those who like to make their opinions known, that are refered to by others as opinionated.

The main reason for this behavior is because of the need to be heard and to hide the person’s inconfidence. In many cases, these people feel unimportant, for whatever reasons while growing up, and they feel resentment that others can get their point across, but historically they themselves have been unable to. Sometimes affected people might come across as being boisterous or loud because they know no other way of being heard. Others will develop psychological techniques to get themselves heard without having to raise their voice, ie: they will know what to say, to make people pay attention without being confrontational. (These people would make excellent copywriters!)

A lot of ADHD sufferers can be outspoken and opinionated, but many are sadly unable to direct a conversation effectively. This results in them riding on the wave of the conversation structure led by someone else, so they will often forget their thread, and become wrapped up in details they didn’t want to discuss. In their frustration at not getting their point across well, they might shout or repeat themselves, reducing the weight of their argument.

Being outspoken and opinionated are also linked to the tendancy to want to speak out whenever an injustice is witnessed. The vast majority of people with Asperger Syndrome have this predisposition, and it makes them quite unforgiving of dishonesty and hypocrisy.

In some cases, the old “Seek and Ye Shall Find” saying comes to mind, as some people are who wired to find injustice will find it everywhere they look. The same people are also often negative and critical people, and sometimes serial complainers.

Some complainers will often talk incessently and rarely listen, and tend not to be action takers. But the more insightful of this group will often be proactive members of their workplace or community, and often take leadership of projects. They make good activists and are the type of people to help change rules and laws.

The more insecure of these people – the negative, complaining types, can sometimes be quite dangerous, because they are too scared to take positive action, but be amazingly skillful manipulators, in order to paint themselves in a good light.