Thread by @Noahsasson

Do first impressions of autistic adults differ between neurotypical (NT) and autistic observers? Our new paper led by @kmdebrabander (now out at #AutisminAdulthood) addresses this question & is full of interesting findings. Here are some of the highlights. liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/au…

Our lab has shown that NTs often form negative 1st impressions of autistic adults and are reluctant to interact with them, which creates barriers to social inclusion. Thankfully, these impressions improve when NTs have high autism knowledge or are made aware of their diagnosis.

Autistic adults, of course, tend to have high familiarity with autism and are often more adept than NTs at inferring autistic intentions and mental states. As a result, their first impressions of other autistic adults might be expected to be more favorable than those made by NTs.

In this study, 32 autistic and 32 NT adults viewed brief videos of 20 autistic and 20 NT unfamiliar adults and then rated them on character traits and their interest in interacting with them. Sometimes we provided their diagnostic status and sometimes we withheld it.

Consistent with our prior work, NTs evaluated autistic adults less favorably than NT adults. Autistic raters, meanwhile, were more favorable than NT raters overall but just like their NT counterparts, they rated autistic adults less favorably than NT adults on several traits.

Autistic raters therefore were just as sensitive to detecting social presentation differences displayed by autistic adults as NTs were and also evaluated them similarly. Such findings are inconsistent with social cognitive deficit interpretations of autistic social understanding.

It also suggests that simply being autistic doesn’t by itself result in more favorable impressions of other autistic adults. Instead, autistic adults may share the NT negativity bias towards autistic differences, perhaps reflecting an internalization of broader cultural norms.

When and how these negative biases develop is an open question. If first impressions are more favorable towards autistic people early in childhood, this may suggest that, with age, NT and autistic individuals gradually adopt explicit and implicit cultural attitudes about autism.

However, in contrast to theories about reduced social motivation in autism, we also found that autistic raters expressed greater interest than NT raters in hanging out with the people in the videos, and this effect was largest when those they were viewing were autistic.

So despite sharing the NT tendency to evaluate autistic adults less positively, autistic raters did not appear to judge these traits as an impediment to social interaction the way that their NT counterparts did. They were, in a sense, less discriminatory and more inclusive.

Providing raters with the diagnostic status of the people in the videos improved 1st impressions of autistic adults made by NT raters but not autistic raters. NT raters likely use the diagnosis as an explanation for what they perceive to be atypical social styles and behaviors.

Autistic raters, meanwhile, either already inferred the diagnostic status of autistic adults even when no diagnosis was provided, or for them the diagnosis was simply less relevant to forming first impressions. The one exception to this finding was on the rating of “awkwardness”.

Autistic raters actually evaluated autistic adults as*more* awkward when their diagnosis was provided. Autistic raters may be highly cognizant and sensitive about autism being associated with awkwardness, and providing a diagnostic label may have increased its salience.

This is speculative, but perceptions of awkwardness may be particularly salient to autistic adults, who are more aware than others about how autistic traits can be judged and stigmatized. This is one reason some partake in masking behaviors to avoid negative responses.

In summary, we found that autistic adults detected and evaluated autistic social presentation differences similarly to NT adults, but these less favorable judgments did not diminish their interest in potential social interaction with autistic individuals the way it did for NTs.

Feel free to email or DM me if you’d like a pdf of the full paper!

Big thanks to @kmdebrabander, @DesiRJones, @DanielFaso, Kerrianne Morrison, and Mike Chmielewski from @SMUPsychology for their great work on this. Also thanks as always to @nPforAutism for their assistance!