Autistic people may read emotions better in others like themselves

Researchers in the UK studied 235 people, including 141 autistic individuals, to investigate how well people understand the emotions of others.

The study compared autistic and non-autistic people’s ability to recognize emotions displayed in videos of autistic and non-autistic adults sharing personal stories. Participants rated the emotional states of the storytellers, and researchers measured how closely those ratings matched the storytellers’ own self-reported feelings.

The research team found that both groups were generally able to determine whether someone was feeling positive or negative. However, autistic participants more accurately tracked the moment-to-moment emotional changes of other autistic storytellers compared to non-autistic participants. Non-autistic participants reported feeling more empathy and interest toward the storytellers overall, while autistic participants often commented on their own difficulty with the task.

These findings offer some support for the “double empathy problem” hypothesis, which suggests misunderstandings arise not from a lack of empathy in autistic people, but from differences in how autistic and non-autistic people experience and communicate emotions. The researchers suggest that autistic individuals may also underestimate their own capacity for empathy. They also note the study relied on video recordings, which may not fully reflect real-life social interactions, and the volunteer sample may not represent the entire autism spectrum.