Mastodawn

what we thought we knew about autism and... whatnot

'For decades, researchers had been measuring the wrong thing. Conflating communication style differences with empathy deficits produced dramatically inflated effect sizes and an illusion of empathy impairment'

#autism #actuallyAutistic #science #psychology

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/positively-different/202601/what-the-world-got-wrong-about-autistic-people

What the World Got Wrong About Autistic People

For decades, autism research compared autistic people to animals, denied them moral sensitivity, and assumed autistic traits made them miserable. All wrong.

Psychology Today

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Andii אַנדִֽי 1d ago

@oscarjiminy
This alone should be shouted about: "researchers had assumed impairment, they found autistic people applying moral principles more consistently—even to strangers, even when costly. In a world increasingly damaged by in-group bias, this isn't a deficit; it's a collective-level fail-safe feature."

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Grant_H 1d ago

@Andii @oscarjiminy I came here to post this exact quote.

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Grant_H 1d ago

@Andii @oscarjiminy so here's another gem:

researchers interpreted autistic moral consistency as "undue concern" about ethics. Because of the enduring assumption “autism=bad,” they pathologized conscience and treated principled behavior as a symptom rather than a strength.

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GhostOnTheHalfShell

@grant_h @Andii @oscarjiminy

The attitude also implies

Social conformity “normal” = morals

It seems like the very wealthy, especially the most notorious one at the moment, likes to clothe himself in autism to lay claim to specialness and characterize his outrageous behavior as autism, but the accurate description would be dark triad.