Increased prosocial value orientation in autistic adults

TL;DR

Autistic adults show more generosity towards strangers than non-autistic adults, and this is not due to repetitive behavior or different attitudes to money.

Contribution

The study shows that increased prosociality in autistic individuals towards socially distant others is genuine and not due to repetitive responding.

Findings

Autistic adults are more prosocial than non-autistic adults towards socially distant others.

The increased prosociality in autism is not driven by repetitive responding or differences in attitudes to money.

Differences in fairness norms may explain increased prosociality in autism, but this needs further testing.

Abstract

Social discounting describes the tendency to give fewer resources to those we feel less close to. Previous work suggests autistic individuals show a flatter decline in generosity towards socially distant others compared with non-autistic participants. We investigated whether this enhanced prosociality towards socially distant others in autism was driven by genuinely higher prosociality or instead a preference for repetitive responding. We measured prosocial preferences in 37 autistic and 38 non-autistic adults using the social value orientation questionnaire, where participants allocated money between themselves and people at six different social distances (e.g. friend vs stranger). We replicated previous findings by showing that autistic adults were more prosocial than non-autistic adults towards more socially distant others. Crucially, these effects were not driven by more repetitive responding in autism, nor by differences in attitudes to money. While autistic people often face challenges navigating their social worlds, our findings reinforce the view that autism is also associated with more prosociality. We argue that differences in fairness norms could drive more prosociality in autism, but this remains to be tested in future work.

Sharing and giving to others are important for our social relationships. Previous studies show that when given opportunities to share money, autistic and non-autistic people give the same amount of money to people they feel close to, like their friends. However, compared with non-autistic people, autistic people give more money to people they feel less close to, like strangers. In this study, we replicated this finding. Compared with non-autistic participants, autistic participants were more generous to people they did not feel close to. We also found that this increased generosity in autism was not the result of autistic participants responding more repetitively in the task. Autistic and non-autistic participants also showed similar attitudes towards money. We propose that some autistic people could be more generous because they show differences in how they think about fairness. But future studies will need to look at this more closely. We hope that our results can help to change the way people think about social behaviour in autism. While autistic people often face challenges navigating their social worlds, autism can also be associated with more generosity.

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