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. 2017 Feb 1:7:40700.
doi: 10.1038/srep40700.

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

Noah J Sasson  1 , Daniel J Faso  1 , Jack Nugent  2 , Sarah Lovell  3 , Daniel P Kennedy  2 , Ruth B Grossman  3
Affiliations

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

Noah J Sasson et al. Sci Rep. .

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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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Group effects on each modality. Groups only did not significantly differ on the transcript of Speech Content.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Group effects on each item. ASD group is rated significantly less favorable on every item except Live Near, Trustworthy, and Smart.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Individuals with ASD (red) are immediately judged more negatively than TD controls (blue) in each of the three rating categories (all ps < 0.001).
Figure 4
Figure 4. Ratings are very stable over repeated exposure to the same person. Each line represents the mean rating provided for one stimulus participant across image exposure number (blue = TD; red = ASD).
Furthermore, note that ratings of stimulus participants are highly consistent across these three judgments tasks (i.e., individuals who scored high on awkwardness scored low on approachability and friendship, and vice versa). For example, the one ASD participant with very typical ratings for awkwardness is the same participant that is rated high on the approachability and friendship ratings.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Ratings for ASD stimulus participants (red) are all significantly less favorable than for TD controls (blue). All ps < 0.001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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