How Accurate Are Adults with Autism in Gauging How Their Personality Traits Are Evaluated By Others?

Background: Adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social cognition that contribute to social dysfunction (Sasson et al., 2011). Reduced understanding of the views and mental states of others in ASD (Happe, 1994) may result in a failure to adjust social behaviors depending upon the perceived expectations and knowledge of a social partner.

Objectives: The current study examines whether adults with ASD are less accurate than typically-developing (TD) controls at evaluating how their personality traits are viewed by others. We predicted that the ASD and TD groups would not differ on the self-perception (SP) of their personality traits or on how they expected others to perceive them (EOP), but they would differ on how unfamiliar others actually perceive them and on the accuracy of their EOP.

Methods: 412 undergraduates (294 female; M age = 20.2) rated videos of 11 adults with ASD (8 male; M age = 26.5) and 11 matched TD controls (8 male; M age = 25.9) on 20 personality traits drawn from the Big Five and autism-related questionnaires. The videos depicted ASD and control participants completing the “High-Risk Social Challenge Task” (Gibson et al., 2010) in which they make a one minute “pitch” for why they should be hired for a reality television program. ASD and control participants also rated themselves (SP), and how they thought someone would rate them upon their first meeting (EOP), on the same 20 personality traits.

Results: Averaged across the 20 traits, the ASD and TD groups did not differ in how they rated themselves (F(1,20)=.17, p=.684), or how they expected to be rated (F(1,20)=.01, p=.937). For individual traits, they differed only on the ASD group having a higher SP and EOP rating for creativity, and the TD group having a higher SP rating for being organized. However, undergraduates rated the ASD group less favorably than the TD group both overall (F(1,410)=1823.56, p<.001), and on every trait after correcting for multiple comparisons (corrected alpha=.0025) except for being quarrelsome. The ASD group was also less accurate at predicting how they would be rated. The discrepancy between their EOP and how they actually were rated was larger than for the TD group, both overall (F(1,411)=1519.86, p<.001), and on every trait after correcting for multiple comparisons, except for being more accurate on stubbornness and disorganization.

Conclusions: Although the ASD and TD groups largely did not differ on their self-perception of their personality traits or on how they expected others would perceive them, unfamiliar third party evaluators perceived the TD group more positively than ASD group. Further, the ASD group was far less accurate at predicting how they would be perceived than the TD group. Such inaccuracies may specify a potential mechanism through which reduced social cognitive ability may contribute to social impairment for adults with ASD.