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Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments

Noah J. Sasson, Daniel J. Faso, Jack Nugent

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Sarah Lovell, Daniel P. Kennedy, Ruth B. Grossman

2017 · Scientific Reports

PsychologyNeuroscience
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From the abstract

Abstract Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including those who otherwise require less support, face severe difficulties in everyday social interactions. Research in this area has primarily focused on identifying the cognitive and neurological differences that contribute to these social impairments, but social interaction by definition involves more than one person and social difficulties may arise not just from people with ASD themselves, but also from the perceptions, judgments, and social decisions made by those around them. Here, across three studies, we find that first impressions of individuals with ASD made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls, but also are associated with reduced intentions to pursue social interaction. These patterns are remarkably robust, occur within seconds, do not change with increased exposure, and persist across both child and adult age groups. However, these biases disappear when impressions are based on conversational content lacking audio-visual cues, suggesting that style, not substance, drives negative impressions of ASD. Collectively, these findings advocate for a broader perspective of social difficulties in ASD that considers both the individual’s impairments and the biases of potential social partners.

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Original HN comments, with labels from simple text rules. A label describes the whole comment and may miss context or irony. Read the discussion to make up your own mind. About the labels

3 selected excerpts · 3 total mentions

dmesg
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Quote: > Why else would someone be so anxious about how others see them? The scientific consensus would tell the author that judgement in humans happens already the moment they see a person and it is immediate, even if the person not doing anything: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700 >across three studies, we find that first impressions [...] made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls Edit: Okay this was completely misunderstood. My point was that the "normal" people in the study immediately internally know if to like or not like a…
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person. Hence why first impressions DO matter the most. Which is why I simply disagree with the argument in the OP that anyone has control over their perception. You also cannot win people over if the most respected person in a group dislikes you. The others will follow boot.
Original comment Social anxiety isn't about being liked
john01dav
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Pathologizing autistic behaviors is not the right approach here. Most autistic behaviors are harmless except insofar as allistic (non-autistic) people provide unnecessary consequences for it and through incompatibilities. We don't say that a Linux workstation in a network of Windows computers is broken or needs to be fixed (or visa-versa), but rather we recognize that the problems are due to the differences. As such, attempts to "cure" or "prevent" autism are actually an eugenic attempt to remove harmless variation that many people irrationally deem to be objectionable. For example, it is commonly stated that autistic people have communication deficits, but this is just a…
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communication difference. We can see this because if a communication task is given to a group of only autistic people they perform comparably to when the same task is given to a group of allistic people. Problems only take place when the group is mixed with both autistic and allistic people being present. The keyword "double empathy problem" can be used to find more information about this. (https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320919286) As another example, allistic people tend to very harshly judge autistic people for extremely subtle cues that they are different. When allistic people are shown recordings of autistic people communicating and of allistic people doing similiar tasks they, within less than a second, judge the autistic people very harshly. This effect persists when controlling for the content of the communication. (https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700) Of course, doing anything that actually warrants such a judgement in a context like that is impossible so this is a bias against autistic people. I think that this can be compared to implicit racial bias: it is something that most people need to learn to consciously identify and then not perpetuate and is not due to any faults with the victim. Good resource on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1AUdaH-EPM There are higher support needs autistic people who need help with activities of daily living. In my opinion, though, in many cases this is not autism but rather autism with an accompanying intellectual disability and the intellectual disability is the reason for higher supports needs. In some cases this could also be caregivers unnecessarily pathologizing behavior and then convincing someone that they need more support than they really do, which I have seen in real life.
Original comment Metabolism of autism reveals developmental origins
reilly3000
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One of the lesser discussed aspects of ADHD is rapid eye movement. This exercise brought mine into focus. Every ~18 seconds I noticed the circle jumped to another size as my gaze was rapidly averted and reset. I tried it a few times and focused intensely and had the same outcome. It’s one of the ways neurotypical folks can intuitively use to (subconsciously) discover our traits and deem us untrustworthy. Shifty… If you find that last statement to be outlandish, please take a look at these resources. https://neuroclastic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Thin-sli... https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-41654-9
Original comment Show HN: Improve cognitive focus in 1 minute

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