ArticleAutism in adulthood2024
Autism and Employment Challenges: The Double Empathy Problem and Perceptions of an Autistic Employee in the Workplace.
Article in Autism in adulthood, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Navigating Mixed-Neurotype Dialogue: Environmental and Affective Influences on Autistic Speakers.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2026Article
- How Long Does it Last? The Enduring Benefits of Neurodiversity Training and Diagnostic Disclosure on Hiring Outcomes for Adults with ASD.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- VIRTUES: A Virtual Reality Multimodal Sensing Platform for Quantifying and Supporting Cross-Neurotype Collaboration.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Using Artificial Intelligence to Support Emotionally Responsive Verbal Communication Among Autistic Workers in a Work Internship Setting.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2026Article
- Discrepancies between feeling and expressing: Perceptions of autistic and non-autistic emotional expressions by non-autistic observers.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2026Article
- Understanding the workplace needs of autistic adults in Singapore: insights to inform inclusive AI support.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Communication in Autistic Adults: An Action-Focused Review.Current psychiatry reports · 2025Review
- Non-autistic observers both detect and demonstrate the double empathy problem when evaluating interactions between autistic and non-autistic adults.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2024Article
- Enactivism in Autism Healthcare Practices: A Scoping Review.Inquiry : a journal of medical care organization, provision and financingArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: High unemployment rates are found among autistic adults. Difficulties with social functioning in non-autistic workplaces can be significant barriers to employment success. Autistic social functioning challenges in non-autistic spaces have traditionally been attributed to assumed impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM). Alternatively, the Double Empathy Problem (DEP) posits that autistic social challenges arise not from assumed impairments within the autistic person but instead from mutual misunderstandings in the autistic/non-autistic social interaction. The purpose of this study was to compare the ToM impairments explanation of autistic social functioning with the DEP, within the context of autistic employee social functioning in a non-autistic workplace. Methods: This study compared autistic and non-autistic participants' ability to accurately interpret the behaviors of an autistic employee at work. A sample of 254 participants (173 non-autistic and 81 autistic) read a vignette about a hypothetical autistic employee having difficulty coping in the workplace. Participants answered open-ended questions regarding their interpretation of the employee's behavior and emotional state. Results: A significantly greater proportion of autistic participants (50.7%) accurately interpreted the behavior of the employee compared with non-autistic participants (31.2%) ( Conclusions: Results from this study contribute to evidence supporting the DEP, shifting the paradigm of autistic social functioning away from a deficit model and toward addressing mutual misunderstandings in the autistic/non-autistic social interaction. The pattern of findings between neurotype groups by behavior interpretation abilities on an autism traits measure points to mutual misunderstandings as a clash of neurologically different social cultures. Addressing the DEP in the workplace would contribute to removing barriers to successful employment for autistic adults.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.