Last updated on November 26, 2023
Autistics make other people uncomfortable, and we do this almost instantly upon meeting. In my communications classes, I teach about the 50 to 500 milliseconds during which most people develop first impressions. These impressions are difficult, nearly impossible, to counteract with evidence and familiarity.
Knowing us doesn’t undo the initial discomfort of meeting us. That is the cost of autism.
Recently, I was asked how to help an autistic college student deal with what he perceived as rejection by instructors and peers. As I researched his self-reported experiences compared to the scientific literature, I came across a 2016 meta-analysis of three previous studies. This sentence, nestled within the findings, caught my attention and changed my perspective before replying to the college student and his disability services support provider.
Negative first impressions by adults may affect how children with ASD are perceived and treated by educators, and similar impressions by same-age observers may limit the formation of social networks and friendships.
The 2016 paper, excerpted below, found that the sense of rejection was possibly justified. The thin-slice judgments occurring when people meet do lead neurologically typical peers and adults to avoid and reject autistics of all ages. I’m uncertain if any amount of training or therapy can undo the autistic traits that lead to this rejection. It might be our neurologies make it difficult to compensate for how we are: atypical by nature.
How people react to us is not merely cultural — no matter how much some people wish that to be the case. Autism is not a cultural disorder. Culture might magnify our challenges, but it does not create them. How people react to autistics is beyond our control, making autism even more isolating and frustrating. Our social interactions involve two or more people, all misunderstanding each other for some reason. This explains why many of us are most comfortable working from home and online as adults. Our words are okay, as long as they exist beyond us, frozen. Even online interactions are problematic in real-time. Asynchronous communication works best for autistics.
Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments
Noah J. Sasson, Daniel J. Faso, Jack Nugent, Sarah Lovell, Daniel P. Kennedy, and Ruth B. Grossman
10 October 2016
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.
How to cite this article: Sasson, N. J. et al. Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments. Sci. Rep. 6, 40700; doi: 10.1038/srep40700 (2016).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
It does not matter what the cognitive level of the autistic might be, the social impairments remain defining aspects of autism. In my experience, (forgive the clinical and misleading term) high-functioning autistic students are extremely susceptible to depression stemming from social rejection. The alienation does not decline with age and seems particularly difficult during high school and college. Being aware of social isolation through observations of others reinforces the sense of loneliness.
Introduction
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social interaction that contribute to broad social disabilities and poor functional outcomes. Across the lifespan, these impairments are associated with smaller social networks and fewer friendships, difficulty securing and retaining employment, high rates of loneliness, and an overall reduced quality of life. Such poor outcomes persist even for individuals with ASD who have average to above average intelligence.
There are many reasons we fail socially. Autistics might be aware of social norms — we might even memorize the routines — but social interactions involve more than memorized routines. We must recognize that…
…social interaction quality is not only predicated upon social ability but also social expression, and many aspects of social presentation are atypical in ASD, including abnormal facial expressivity, anomalous use of gaze, lower rates or unusual timing of expressive gestures, violations of personal space, and unusual vocal prosody.
Based on the responses of “typically developing” (TD) peers, our facial expressions are wrong, our eye contact is wrong, our gestures are wrong, our distance is wrong, and our voices are wrong. How many “wrongs” can we correct through conscious effort? Not many, because conscious effort requires more than the 50–500 milliseconds we have to make a good impression. We start off poorly with people and our reactions to the rejection lead to yet more rejection and alienation.
How people respond to unfamiliar individuals prior to social interaction is governed in large part by first impressions, which are near instantaneous judgments of personality and character traits based upon “thin slices” of information. First impressions are associated with immediate behavioral responses and long-lasting attitudes. Whereas positive first impressions can evoke approach behaviors, negative first impressions often prompt rejection or avoidance behaviors. For individuals with ASD, negative perceptions may relate to the social exclusion they frequently experience and affect their ability to successfully navigate the social demands necessary for optimal functional outcomes in adulthood.
It isn’t the autistic’s words being rejected… it is the autistic social being that is rejected. Our thoughts are valued; we are not. That might seem like harsh hyperbole, but the reality is that I have been asked to take courses online because I made others uncomfortable. The physical me, The Autistic Me, was rejected as a member of the class, not my intellectual contributions. As the study notes,
Findings
Our findings show that negative first impressions of adults with ASD occurred only when audio and/or visual information was present, and not when the transcript of their speech content was evaluated (Study 1).
It isn’t what we say but how we say it that leads people to avoid and reject autistics. Unfortunately, it gets worse. Even photographs of autistics received negative emotional responses, while photos of neurotypical controls did not. Somehow, we look atypical.
… a static image was sufficient for generating negative first impressions of those with ASD.… In contrast, first impressions of TD [typically developing] controls improved with the addition of a visual information, suggesting that unlike the ASD group, visual cues helped rather than hurt the impressions they made on observers.
We also demonstrate that negative impressions remain stable across multiple thin-slice judgments. A series of randomly selected static images of college-aged individuals with ASD collected from a first-person perspective during social interaction were consistently rated as less approachable and more awkward than matched controls, with observers indicating a lower likelihood of being friends with members of the ASD group (Study 2).
From across a classroom, from across a quad or courtyard, people sense the autistic is different. Our professors recognize this, too. We are immediately sized up, before we say a word. People instantly want to avoid autistics, and this desire to avoid us includes well-trained, socially conscious, educators at all levels. When a teacher rejects us, we experience the closing of a path towards normalcy and success. If education isn’t a safe space for autistics, no space will be sufficiently tolerant and accepting.
Negative first impressions by adults may affect how children with ASD are perceived and treated by educators, and similar impressions by same-age observers may limit the formation of social networks and friendships.
Autistics experience almost daily rejection of our autistic traits. My wife and children do react negatively to some of my traits, and I am painfully aware of this. But, they don’t reject me. Strangers, however, have that opportunity to avoid me and to reject me.
If you aren’t autistic, consider what a job interview means for us. A first date. The first day of school. Every situation with strangers is a situation in which we will be judged. There’s almost no way to prepare people for a first impression. The only method to prepare people that I can envision is to send an email explaining, “I am autistic and…” but that’s not how I want to enter a job interview.
The researchers offer an idealistic (unrealistic) solution:
If our goal is to improve social interactions for individuals with ASD, it may therefore be equally important to educate others to be more aware and accepting of social presentation differences, rather than trying to change the many interwoven factors of self-presentation that mark the expressions of individuals with ASD as atypical.
What about the student who contacted me? I passed along this research and suggested training for his instructors. I also asked permission to explain why this research is important to those of us in higher education. We need to be able to judge our students on their abilities, not how we feel about them. Unfortunately, it is impossible to interact with people in a neutral manner, no matter how hard every good teacher tries to be neutral towards students. Body language and tone always reveal how people feel about each other.
At least research confirms that being autistic makes it difficult to navigate social interactions. Too bad life is mostly lived through social interactions.
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11 Comments
When I grew up, there was no autism. At least none defined. During those years, the fifties and sixties, people were just people. Individuals were generally liked or disliked on the basis of their behavior and known character. Teachers would work with kids who had difficulties in school, whatever those difficulties were. I have to wonder if these labels are helpful in any way. Or do the labels themselves cause individuals to behave differently and to be so sensitive to possible rejection that these emotions are close to the surface and the emotions will cause new contacts to back off, sensing the emotions? This would definitely occur with animals interacting. So, do these labels create an internal “program” which makes it more difficult for those with autism?
No, this is completely incorrect, wrong, and hurtful to those who have asd. I was diagnosed in my mid-thirties, and not having a “label” as you call it did not prevent me from being rejected, isolated, or having the few friends I thought I actually made suddenly reject me seemingly without reason. That “label” that I finally got after 33 years finally offered an explanation and has helped me repair relationships as it’s offered a reason and understanding for the the “puzzling behavior” that people saw in me over the years. That “puzzling behavior” was me simply being my autistic self, and is not something I can change, nor is something I was even aware of for many many years. Having a diagnoses as a child would have gone a long way in helping me throughout the years, and I could maybe have avoided a lot of pain and heartache.
I didn’t have a label growing up even in the 90’s, but I experienced all of this.
But back in the 50’s and 60’s, there wasn’t really a diagnosis of “high functioning autism”, but every community had the odd or eccentric person they ostracized or warned their kids about. Some employers had piece-meal work for those who couldn’t function in most jobs, like filling the coffee and sorting the mail, but they weren’t treated like they were part of the social structure of the company. And everyone knows the odd little lady that was never able to get married.
There may not have been words for it, but we existed.
Labels are irrelevant. I grew up in the 50s and 60s and never could figure out why nobody seemed to like me, why I had no friends, and why I always ended up by myself. I spent most of my young adulthood trying to figure out how to get people to like me but without success. I eventually learned canned responses and emotional reactions, but those honestly didn’t helped. Having to interact with other adults during my children’s school years confirmed (in my mind) that the problem was that I am an unlikable person. It wasn’t until this past year that I became aware of high functioning autism and once I began to research and understand it, my entire life made sense! I’m still learning and I don’t really have any resources except online, so when I read articles like this I want to cry with relief.
No. I’ve read,so many accounts of autistic people who weren’t diagnosed until adulthood, and most of them felt relieved; that they finally knew why they struggled so much with friendships and rejection, among other things. The rejections happened before the diagnosis, not as a result of it or as a result of an attitude after being diagnosed.
I was never diagnosed as a child, but was almost always the odd one out, with few if any friends. I reacted badly to the rejection, crying or feeling sorry for myself, and of course this caused further rejection! But this had nothing to do with any diagnoses, because I didn’t have any. If I had, I might’ve had some social skills training, or else have learned to be happy with just one friend or being alone much of the time (I did and still do like solitary things, but then I was always wanting a social life that I was never able to have and which probably wouldn’t have suited me anyway.
It makes it difficult. Labeling someone without knowing they have autism is very damaging and hurtful to the person with HFA and can create so much misunderstandings with the people involved creating a negative labeling of the person with HFA. For example, a HFA individual interacting for the second time, Suddenly gets labeled heartless.
“Labels” don’t create autistic people. We already are off putting to others, whether we know we are autistic or not. I was just diagnosed at 42.
The label just helps me make sense of why my entire life I’ve been rejected by almost all people.
I debated labels with my husband when I became a teacher. He seemed to resent my wondering whether a student was autistic, and why I was so taken with the possibility of a diagnosis, why I wanted the label so much. I had a few kids for whom I was leaving a lot of notes for replacements teachers, and I started to worry about the future. If I’m away for a day, or when I hand the student over to a new teacher, I can say “This child is autistic” and that next teacher knows, straight off, they need extra support around things like eye contact, stimming, physical stimulation, staying on task, understanding tasks, group work, contact. They won’t spend precious time accidentally misinterpreting things, or becoming impatient, and those moments of initial discomfort or confusion, although they shouldn’t really happen in the classroom, are much less likely to occur. It supports the student, it normalises their needs, it helps them feel supported and looked after (especially since a change in teacher can be upsetting). It also supports the students around them to know this person is looked after, and they can see how broad ‘normal’ really is thanks to the respect and support their teachers show. Labels can seem like drama-making, but with them can come recognition, respect and responsiveness. As a child, many of us would certainly have benefited if schools in the 80s-90s were more proactive in explicitly supporting neurodiversity.
I have read the work of Noah Sasson and Damian Milton (et-al) on the subject of discrimination and autism and I can confirm my experiences of same from an early age. I grew up in the 60s and was not diagnosed until 2005 by which time I had been through decades of physical beatings and ‘gaslighting’ which it has taken the past 10 years to rationalise. NT’s are extremely reputation-sensitive-network-depending and we are first-principle-whistle-blowers… No wonder we are unpopular! Our micro body-language shows our discomfort in this NT world and we are penalised for it minute-by-minute. It is racism.
Lots more research appearing in UK re masking and the psychological cost of it to us… Also the effects of older-age when the immune system and faculties begin to fail our need to use hyper-vigilance to negotiate the NT world… This can only be good for us and official if not social perception…
I am forced to agree with the statement that labels are irrelevant. I suspect I have been autistic all along, I have not been diagnosed but my lifetime of painful, repeated totally negative experiences match what autistic people face until they depart this horrible world.