Mastodawn

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Have you wondered where the claim that autistic people lack empathy came from?

The “jellyfish” study (2011) was influential in this, as it concluded that autistic people lacked Theory of Mind & capacity for moral reasoning.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-01-autistic-mind.html

In one of the fictional scenarios given to participants, Janet tells a friend it’s safe to swim with jellyfish. She believes they’re harmless. The friend is stung and dies.

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#Autism #Empathy #Neurodiversity #TheoryofMind #ActuallyAutistic

Neuroscientists find evidence that autistic patients have trouble understanding others' intentions

(PhysOrg.com) -- A study from MIT neuroscientists reveals that high-functioning autistic adults appear to have trouble using theory of mind to make moral judgments in certain situations.

Medical Xpress

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Autistic participants were more likely than non-autistic participants to say Janet was to blame, despite her good intentions.

This was interpreted as evidence of faulty moral reasoning or reduced empathy.

But that conclusion rests on three errors of logic built into the task itself, and not on evidence that autistic people care less about others.

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K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Error 1) Presupposition / Loaded framing. The task assumes that when harm occurs, someone usually gets blamed. That assumption isn't tested & is built into the question.

Error 2) False dichotomy. Moral evaluation is reduced to blame vs no blame, leaving no room for partial, shared, or non-punitive responsibility.

Error 3) Category error. Conflation of blame and responsibility. Responsibility for outcomes is not distinguished from moral condemnation, collapsing two very different concepts.

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K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Within this frame, prioritizing outcomes over intentions is coded as a moral error...

... a lack of understanding about the situation and about other people.

Even though, for the person who’s now dead, intentions make very little difference, while the outcome has been quite important to them.

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K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

I’ve noticed that being innocent of knowledge is a good defense for many crimes in our society.

Those with the most power to change things seem to often be the most innocent of knowledge.

While people who are marginalized, discriminated against, and who don’t have much in the way of resources, influence, or free time...

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K.J. Elphinstone

...are tasked with the enormous and near-impossible job of ‘educating them’ (and blamed for failing when they don’t manage to).

But, sadly, the privileged ones are selectively deaf or you didn’t use the right tone or… or… well, I think you get the gist.

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#EpistemicInjustice #Racism #BlackLivesMatter #Patriarchy #GenderEquality #TransLivesMatter #LGBTQ+

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

So I feel a lack of knowledge (esp. when it leads to great harm) is not an exemption from responsibility.

Here’s an alternative take.
(Note: These are just my thoughts, I’m very open to discussion and other suggestions!)

It may be – though we can’t know this, since participants weren’t asked – that autistic people in the study didn’t lack anything, but rather tended to reason in logical terms.

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K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

This would mean:

- responsibility should be proportional to agency, influence, and ability to change outcomes (this would be not just logical but also extremely useful),

- individual / exclusive moral condemnation or punishment is not required in all situations where harm occurs,

- responsibility to take appropriate action is not the same thing as blame, and conflating the two is an error.

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K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Autistic people, after all, are known for preferring logic (I certainly do).

And we’re also known for thinking outside the box – meaning that if we’re forced to make false decisions based on faulty assumptions, then we are quite likely to make the ‘wrong’ choice.

Interested to hear others’ thoughts on this! And I’ll be looking for another influential study to look closely at.

I really enjoy analyzing things! 😊

End of thread. 🧵

Vinnie (any)Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone from my point of view, you're 100% correct in your take. They leave out a lot of information because they want to isolate the issue, but they forget that they need to do so in a way that doesn't make the test overly vague. It would have been simply resolved by defining 'blame' or by explicitly stating that punishment is part of assigning blame here.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Yes, they could have designed the study with those things in mind - and should have, in my view. I've a feeling it would have been a rather different study if it had less simplicity but more clarity around the foundation concepts.

Vinnie (any)Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone I'm not autistic, but I would have found it very difficult to answer the question too. I would probably have leaned to not wanting to assign blame because I dislike the way our society handles guilt and punishment, but that's not what they asked either. So again; bad test.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

exactly, right? Thanks for answering like this, you've validated my reality 😊

Cavyherd Feb 15

@greenWhale @KatyElphinstone

Our culture generally tends to conflate punishment, deterrence, & retribution, with all sorts of nasty results. I think Katy's analysis above neatly unpacks that.

ETA: Oh, I forgot a fourth one: restraint. It does makes a certain amount of sense to keep some offenders off the street. But if that's your primary method of managing offenses...you've got the wrong end of the stick.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 15

Exactly 💯 this.

And while the deterrence makes sense and is useful, the other things don't and aren't.

Ah... except perhaps for the purpose of maintaining power structures and the status quo 🤷‍♀️

(I'm laughing as I write this, and thinking, "ah, no wonder people don't like us" - especially privileged ones who like their position)

#ActuallyAutistic

Everyday.Human Derek Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone

Thank you for the thread im still processing all of it as it seems to ask some valid questions of responsibility, and collaboration of all of us I guess ?

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

Yes, exactly that 🥰

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone i think the only differences i would have with you are semantic. in fact the whole problem seems to be one of semantics: what does "blame" mean?

Yes, Janet is "to blame"; her advice directly lead to a death. That doesn't mean that she should be punished! that's a whole other question!

i think the questioners are failing to recognise that "blame" has a variety of different meanings here — as many autists would have happilly pointed out to them…

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

@fishidwardrobe

Yes! That's a different way of expressing what I think is basically the same problem. What even is 'blame'? In your scenario, you do equate it with being responsible (which I think is fine, too).

And I love the bit "that doesn't mean she should be punished" :)

Yes, sigh, I wish they had asked the autists to point these things out

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

@fishidwardrobe

Just realising that what I like most about your take is that you're taking society's ruling that we have to talk about 'blame' (thank you, society) but then you're subverting it to something that actually makes more sense.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

@fishidwardrobe

And it's occurring to me that perhaps the participants in the study were doing the same thing...

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone i'm not sure i'm even subverting it (although i'll take that as a compliment!); it's just the standard autistic "okay, what do they *mean* by that? because it's not clear at all…"

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone i'm going to assert my bias here and say that, as allistics, they assumed the meaning of "blame" they intended was the only one in play. "of *course* everyone will understand what we mean"…

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

@fishidwardrobe

Absolutely. And that was error no. 1 🤣

HighlandLawyer Feb 14

@fishidwardrobe @KatyElphinstone
Exactly, "blame" is an imprecise term used to mean be at fault, or have responsibility, or be a causal factor, or be a scapegoat, or combinations thereof.

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe Feb 14

@HighlandLawyer @KatyElphinstone right!

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 14

@HighlandLawyer @fishidwardrobe

Exactly this.

Ari "Two Elements" Jackson Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone Wowww... I appreciate you posting this; I had never read about that study before, and it seems so incredibly full of pitfalls and flaws as to be utterly nonsensical.

So we get in trouble for not assigning blame? Or for assigning blame to someone who didn't have certain knowledge (basically blaming someone for ignorance, which I often do, tbh).

To me, it would be common sense not to swim with jellyfish if you didn't know what they were because certain species of them *are* dangerous. Making assumptions like that (I can swim safely because my friend said so) just seems like something that a lot of people do -- that perhaps we NDs often don't, as we are such information hounds?

I mean everybody else else's mileage might vary but... my first thought about jellyfish would be a certain percentage of them are dangerous, why swim with them at all? So the person who didn't have the knowledge and told their friend it was OK absolutely is at fault in my mind. I actually feel outrage that they did not have all the facts; I think a lot of people move through the world without any facts at all in their brains.

What about the mushroom question? Where does that even come from?! So the person giving the mushrooms to their supposed friend *thought* they were poisonous and gave them anyway? Why? And then they weren't poisonous so they get off the hook?! What the heck? Who would even think to do that? What kind of question even is that?

If that's not emotion about something -- even a situation that's completely unreal -- I don't know what it is. But it's emotion over injustice and incomplete information, not over behavior. These researchers completely overlooked that, and expected the very small cohort of autistic people (so small as to be statistically insignificant re an actual scientific study), got dinged for not having emotions about people. That is so very Neurotypical 😂

Dino Belbo Feb 16

@arisummerland @KatyElphinstone

Oof, this hit home very hard! My partner would often get mad at me for instinctively double checking something he said, and take that personally as lack of trust. But I do that with everyone, I just want to be sure for myself before doing something I may regret. Luckily the situation changed after I got diagnosed.

Douglas Edwards

@KatyElphinstone The whole "lack of #empathy" idea builds on the #TheoryOfMind idea, which is rotten to the core. The basic paper applying it to #autistics (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985) got the idea from an irredeemably flawed paper that had applied it to CHIMPANZEES[!] (Premack and Woodruff 1978). Both papers are hopelessly confused about what it even MEANS to say that a person — or an animal — has, or does not have, a "theory of mind". Both of these groups of researchers should have gotten clear on their concepts BEFORE conducting any experiments — and since they didn’t, both papers should have been refused publication.

That Frisian Girl-ish Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone There is something to the blame vs responsibility view. The question was put to "high functioning" autistics, meaning that those were pretty good at masking, and anticipating the social discourse. The general experience and script is, the victim will be blamed .
That's how we get through life, by correctly anticipating what realistic reactions will be. From my experience, NT people react pretty badly when I apply my masking prediction scripts to hypothetical, isolated scenarios, because they think that society isn't like that. And suddenly we're painted "deficient", because our experience based scripting reflects a pretty awful picture of society instead of the lip service expected in hypothetical, artificial scenarios.

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe Feb 14

@thatfrisiangirlish @KatyElphinstone good point, i think.

@thatfrisiangirlish @KatyElphinstone Depressingly true. People think I'm gloomy or misanthropic because I paint what I think are accurate, dispassionate pictures of folks' behaviour.

And yet, I somehow still seem to be more (cautiously) optimistic in my interactions with strangers than lots of NT people where preconception seems to shape reality.

That Frisian Girl-ish Feb 14

@gra I mean, same? Just because I can model pretty well the general response of society, that doesn't mean I agree, endorse, and act according to that. Because that would be depressing as fuck. @KatyElphinstone

prozacchiwawa Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone

i'm making some assumptions drawn from my own life, but i experienced a lot of bullying as a kid and i wonder if this isn't common among people with neurodivergence. that might leave someone predisposed to judge outcomes (even if not consciously).

as a kid it was hard for me to tell if someone was being sincere or lying to get me into an unsafe situation. others with similar experiences might focus more on making up their own mind and evaluating what they think will happen as a survival strategy.

cybervegan Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone I like to say there's always another option in a forced binary choice. Like the trolley problem - group A or group B gets killed: you choose. What about slipping the points so the trolley doesn't hit either group? These contrived problems often assume there is no 3rd option, without ever considering if there is one. I think Autistics are much more likely to identify the "3rd option". I've often found myself in work situations where management have identified the "two possible" solutions, and I've been called awkward for asking about the (to me) third option they never even identified.

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 14

@KatyElphinstone
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Thing is, when I as an Autistic blame someone or something, I’m just identifying the causal chain of events - there’s nothing “moral,” about it.
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It’s a “moral,” matter when you’re planning to punish who or whatever caused the problem. As a lifelong God’s fool sort of Autistic, that isn’t automatic, in fact I try to never punish anyone for anything.
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So “blame,” is a word that means different things to different neurotypes, making these tests faulty from the start. We’re suppose to lack empathy because for them, blaming Sally means hurting Sally, which it doesn’t for me.
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Worse, their version includes punishment, and they think that’s Human Nature and true for everyone so they don’t even try to compensate for that confound.
🤨😇💜
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#ND #ActuallyAutistic #Autism @autistics

@punishmenthurts @KatyElphinstone @autistics

I never had a diagnosis, but I can relate so much on this.

I always have to remind me that people doesn't like a rational analysis of what's happening if they are involved, and that it makes me come out as judgmental even if I have zero intentions of that.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 15

Exactly this, yes. I'm always a bit astonished at what I've perceived to be the arrogance of people who are very sure about their own intentions.... Especially when they keep repeating the same actions over and over, and then act surprised about there being a similar outcome every time 🤷‍♀️

@punishmenthurts @autistics

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone @autistics
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the number of likes the above toot got is extremely encouraging for me, thank you all so much. 💜
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This bit of text is from just a few toots down (now gone), but I want to make a thread:
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Waaaiit a minute - this study could be interpreted exactly that way, couldn’t it? That the Autistics don’t assume the right to punish whoever was wrong, so they don’t see the problem with naming names - we Autistics lack empathy - for a cruelty we were never going to apply in the first place. It’s their cruelty to punish Sally, but our “lack of empathy,” to not even dream of it?
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So this study does indeed suggest that Autistics don’t automatically punish, or think of it. 👍
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For my part, I knew punishment is an Allistic trait, but this is the first bit of “normal science,” that I can interpret as saying it’s not an Autistic trait. That’s sort of huge!
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Back live:
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I’m curious, were the Autistics never going to punish Sally, or is it just a separate issue? Did we think of it as we read the example, that she would be sent to prison or something before we answered?
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Or did the fact that they never said that in the setup, that it was “understood,” make it not part of the question for you, did we read it literally, this and nothing else?
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I’m so happy for this human based test of theirs, you’d never get this far with the puppet one.
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If anyone has anything, I’d love to hear it. 💜
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/2
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#ND #ActuallyAutistic #Autism

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 16

@punishmenthurts

Haha, beautifully put 😊

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone @autistics 💜

@punishmenthurts @KatyElphinstone @autistics so, you also think not being inclined to punish can be an autistic trait? I raised my kid without punishments at all: we had a system of agreements which were functioning like ‘I will do my part if you do yours’, and I always tried to teach about possible consequences of any actions (or lack of those) - so my kid knows that crossing a street on red light is bad not because I or some police will punish them, but because a car can hit them, and so on. And at work, when I work as a manager(I always try to avoid that, but at any place I stay long enough I got pushed to managing positions) I don’t punish anyone - when there is a fail, I try to define what actions/decisions lead to that fail and try to organize future processes to avoid possible scenarios in future. The thing is, I don’t believe in punishments and think they do more harm than good: a person that is afraid of a punishment pays more attention to the possible policer/executor than to the problem itself and gets more likely involved, after which spends more time and effort trying to hide from the punishment than to fix the consequences of the issue.

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@olena @KatyElphinstone @autistics
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Well, yeah, exactly. And you're a rare person to express it. 💜
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It was always what I knew my difference with "normal people," was about, decades before I heard the word, "Autism."

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 16

@punishmenthurts

I've also never punished either of my children. I don't understand the logic of it. I am genuinely perplexed when I see other parents or schools punishing children... Even for small mistakes that they are already being punished for (like losing something, or doing badly on an exam). It's such an odd thing to do. It's a) cruel, and b) ineffective.

I also just offer comfort and try to help them any way I can. That's it. 💟

@olena @autistics

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone @olena @autistics
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I've been hatched and on here for more than three years now, looking for this association, this connection between Autism and non-punishing. Why does it seem like I'm only seeing it here now?
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Weird. 💜

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 16

@punishmenthurts

Aw 🥰
Maybe more autistic mothers coming out of the woodwork?
Also tbh I tend to keep a bit quiet about how much autonomy I give my kids. Habit. If I told the school I listen to my kids preferences, never punish them, never coerce them, etc. they'd disapprove so strongly we'd get nowhere with things. I have to say "their father and I think it is best for their education/future yada yada" (don't ever mention your kid liking/disliking etc. it'll be the end 😳).

@olena @autistics

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone @punishmenthurts I was spanked by a school for anything they didnt like, add some added trauma like destrution of my favorite things... And assumptions of bad behavior when I havent wanted to do any bad since I was four.... left me with Trauma I have not recovered from these past fourty years.

I could pretend like I am not bothered, but my night terrors replay the terror of school, I sometimes wake up screaming.

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@GreenRoc @KatyElphinstone
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Bastages. Iceholes. Idiots. 💜
They clearly think it's fucking magic.

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@punishmenthurts @KatyElphinstone lol yea. Mom told me a story of when she said she realized I did not understand consiquences....

When I came up to her with a paddle (ping pong) in one hand and a half eaten cookie in the other saying "Mommie I ate a cookie, would you spank me now"

I think, I knew consequences VERY well... and I felt better with sugar, turns out I was hypoglycemic.

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@GreenRoc @KatyElphinstone
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turns out she didn’t “understand consequences,” except the one she wanted.

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@punishmenthurts @KatyElphinstone In her mind, sugar would wind me up...

I feel the opposite... sugar calms me down. Sugar is better than some of those... other chemicals to cope.

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@GreenRoc @KatyElphinstone
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same sometmes, sugar isike caffeine, I never wake up without it. Also, that's the whole theory of Ritalin, that stimulants calm the hyperactive.
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“Consequences,” - they replace each and every sort of real consequences with a single one, and then if you think just that one is stupid, then YOU “don’t understand consequences.” 😀

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@punishmenthurts Ridilin and seroquel and hadderal make me more wound up, and restless for days.

"We need you to sleep so you can be released from this psyche unit"

They jabbed me without my concent. -_-

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@GreenRoc
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💜
so by that general theory you weren’t hyper to begin with with
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or that theory was just crap 😀

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 17

@punishmenthurts Hyper sensitive, so I was grouchy and screamy. Ow mom the bath hurts! The clothes hurts, I hate socks! Mommie it hurts when you brush my hair (I realized in adulthood, she was scraping out the dandruff).

I was referred to as having "severely emotionally disturbed" unofficial DX because dozens of doctors could not figure out what I had (during the DSM 3).

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 17

@punishmenthurts

She used punishments of spanking, sweet denial, food denial, shopping denial, rewards, threats, privilege denials, money, toy theft, spanking, time outs, food deprivation... she was trying to get me to behave like a normal person.

I may have "pre-verbal trauma" as well as having my head bashed into stairs by my bro when I was three... that head trauma messes with my feelings too.

and bi polar in mom's relatives.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 16

@punishmenthurts

And the results I've seen... it kind of makes me laugh (though sadly)... because society has been so duped!!

Kids who like mine have been 'rewarded' (aka loved) when they are low or disappointed, are incredible 🥰

They are also proactive and motivated and kind. They work hard, they do well. Cheerfully do tasks (and often proactively!).

Oh lol. All the things you're told your kids will be if you discipline them harshly. 🙄🤷‍♀️

@olena @autistics

Goiterzan/Amygdalai Lama Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone @olena @autistics
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I was talking just like that until the mid-2010s, I thought that's what was happening, I was proud and telling people . . . and maybe they've retained some of it, who knows. My mistake was keeping the ex around. 💜

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone My parents told me that them punishing me was...
- tough love
- that's life
- consiquences

To me, I never wanted to do any bad since I was four years old.

I still get punished, even to this very day today, because someone else assumed I did bad, and felt like I deserved punishment.

It goes back generations for some unknown reason... spare the rod spoil the child, well, that school of hard knocks knocks off some years.

My parents never lived to retirement.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 16

Which is such twisted psychological abuse. So typical of our society... "I'm hurting you because it's good for you."

Whether it's emotional, physical, or mental, abuse is abuse and it is never good for a person (how could it be?!).

💟🫂

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone Agreed.

Once I asked for a deeper meaning to these things called tough love... something about a dirty river, dont play in there kids.

Mom never stopped telling me "We did the best we knew" from my toddler years to her deathbed. Never stopped loving me they said.

They didnt know better than to correct me for being "improper" Mom why, I asked sometimes... "I didnt want to see you get hurt" she said.

"Hurt by who?" I'd ask. I never got a consistent answer to that.

Green Roc Thoughts Feb 16

@KatyElphinstone The abuse, being good?

I been told it is to toughen me up.

I dont toughen, I'm traumatized, with maladaptive behavior and uncontrolled screaming fits. I am terrified of being punished.

Punishments undeserved for almost 50 years. I make new mistakes, and accused of intents and actions I have not done, and would never do on purpose.

The emotional pain is unproven, but it is there slowly killing me.

I wish I had better, than unending suffering without bad intents since 1980s

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 17

Oh, love 🫂

Someone said to me recently that they were in such a dilemma because though they saw the sense in the kind of parenting I talk about in my book etc. they were just worried about their child being resilient enough and "learning resilience"..

I said that - just in my experience - the only way to learn resilience is through safety, esp. emotional safety. Anything else isn't really resilience; it's brittle. It'll shatter easily, or need substances etc. to hold it together.

K.J. Elphinstone Feb 17

This idea that humans become strong by being betrayed by those closest to them, culminating in self betrayal once that internalizes - is one of the strangest ideas, and the most unbased in evidence, that us poor hapless humans have come up with yet, I think!