Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article discusses implicit attitudes and how they affect impressions and relationships. This is kind of interesting, in that it doesn't work the way you would expect or hope it to, and the results can be highly detrimental to any outsider in a group (often, autistic people and our families).
This also is part of the Hidden Curriculum that autistic people are often not told about, yet are expected to know as well as any neurotypical person. In this particular case, my guess is that most people follow this rule... but don't particularly notice or realize it.
This discovery can essentially be summarized as: "In general, and without better knowledge, people think other people deserve how others treat them." So, if a family with an autistic child attends a family function, but the people around them already know their kid sometimes acts strangely or "misbehaves," they may avoid that family, and others will notice and assume that family is somehow unpleasant, standoffish, or deserving of that avoidance. Same goes for an autistic employee at a work party, church function, or other gathering.
Needless to say, I'm not terribly impressed with this particular human heuristic (heuristics are mental shortcuts that we use automatically to save energy and time). This explains some, though of course not all, of the isolating effect being autistic can land you with.
Today's article discusses implicit attitudes and how they affect impressions and relationships. This is kind of interesting, in that it doesn't work the way you would expect or hope it to, and the results can be highly detrimental to any outsider in a group (often, autistic people and our families).
This also is part of the Hidden Curriculum that autistic people are often not told about, yet are expected to know as well as any neurotypical person. In this particular case, my guess is that most people follow this rule... but don't particularly notice or realize it.
This discovery can essentially be summarized as: "In general, and without better knowledge, people think other people deserve how others treat them." So, if a family with an autistic child attends a family function, but the people around them already know their kid sometimes acts strangely or "misbehaves," they may avoid that family, and others will notice and assume that family is somehow unpleasant, standoffish, or deserving of that avoidance. Same goes for an autistic employee at a work party, church function, or other gathering.
Needless to say, I'm not terribly impressed with this particular human heuristic (heuristics are mental shortcuts that we use automatically to save energy and time). This explains some, though of course not all, of the isolating effect being autistic can land you with.
I've mentioned, I think, that I had no friends worth the title until middle school. The first person that did actually put in the time to befriend me was a Britishman, who I met online. We became friends because we had some things in common, but perhaps we also became friends because there were no isolating social signals to be read from others. He was, so to speak, not turned away before he had a chance to actually meet me.
This is likely a part why many autistics find their first friends and communities to call home online, rather than in person. You're judged on what you say, not your skin color, what status symbols you're wearing, how people normally treat you, or even how you speak (or don't speak). All that information is missing online, and instead people are forced to rely on your ideas and your textual presentation of yourself.
This is likely a part why many autistics find their first friends and communities to call home online, rather than in person. You're judged on what you say, not your skin color, what status symbols you're wearing, how people normally treat you, or even how you speak (or don't speak). All that information is missing online, and instead people are forced to rely on your ideas and your textual presentation of yourself.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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