Social psychology

Why People With Autism Might Be The Ultimate Social Psychologists

Study debunks a popular myth about autism and social insight.

People with autistic traits make good social psychologists.

Social psychology is the study of how people behave in groups.

It seeks insights into how people influence each other, interact together and more.

When given tests of social psychological knowledge, people with autistic tendencies do as well, or slightly better, than those without autistic traits.

The finding might come as a surprise, since people with autism typically find it harder to judge the mental states of others.

However, people who have autistic traits may do better on the test by relying on analytical skills.

Their improved analytical skills may result from paying closer attention to patterns in people’s behaviour.

Autistic insight

For the study, 6,595 people in 104 countries were given a quiz of standard social psychological findings.

The questions included things like:

Do people feel more responsible for their behavior in groups than as individuals?
Does catharsis/venting work: If I am angry, will taking out my hostilities on a stuffed doll make me feel better?
On average, do people work harder in groups or as individuals?

(Answers at the bottom.)

Mr Anton Gollwitzer, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“People with ASD traits seem to be able to analyze how people in general will react in a social situation, even if they have difficulties judging the mental states of individuals.”

People with autistic traits may develop stronger analytical social psychological skills because of their difficulties determining the mental and cognitive states of other people’s minds, the authors think.

Answers

The answers are:

People feel more responsible as individuals than in groups (see: deindividuation).
Catharsis does not work (see: venting).
People work harder as individuals than in groups (see: social loafing).

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Gollwitzer et al., 2019).

Listen For This Simple Clue That Someone Is Attracted To You

How people signal attraction with their voice.

People signal attraction to each other by lowering their voice pitch.

For both men and women, a lower voice pitch signalled attraction.

Dr Susan Hughes, the study’s first author, said:

“We found that both sexes used a lower-pitch voice and showed a higher level of physiological arousal when speaking to a more attractive opposite-sex target.”

For the study, 48 people were asked to leave a scripted voice message while viewing a picture of an invented person.

When they looked at a picture of a more attractive person, people used a lower pitched voice for the message.

Men were expected to lower their tone to signal attraction, which is what they did.

Dr Hughes expected that women would raise their voices to seem more attractive, but the opposite happened.

Dr Hughes said:

“There appears to be a common stereotype in our culture that deems a sexy female voice as one that sounds husky, breathy, and lower-pitched.

This suggests that the motivation to display a sexy/seductive female voice may conflict with the motivation to sound more feminine.”

It could be that women learn to lower their tone as it is an accepted signal, Dr Hughes said:

“When a woman naturally lowers her voice, it may be perceived as her attempt to sound more seductive or attractive, and therefore serves as a signal of her romantic interest.”

The research also found that the change in voice tone was large enough that people could spot it.

Dr Hughes said:

“These findings may have implications for the important role voice plays in mate selection and attraction.

If people can perceive changes in others’ voices when speaking to attractive individuals, this perception may be adaptive for identifying interested potential mates, detecting partner interest in others, and possible detection of partner infidelity.”

The study was published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (Hughes et al., 2010).