ArticleAutism in adulthood2024
Autistic People's Experience of Empathy and the Autistic Empathy Deficit Narrative.
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 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- "It Has Shown Me How Much I Am Capable Of": An Exploration of Autistic Burnout Experiences in Motherhood.Autism in adulthood · 2026Article
- "Shutdowns Are Like You're Stuck on the Blue Screen of Death": A Metaphor Analysis of Autistic Shutdowns.Autism in adulthood · 2026Article
- Nuances of double empathy in autistic and non-autistic people: examination using the empathic accuracy paradigm.Molecular autism · 2026Article
- Naturalistic facial dynamics enable quantitative clinical assessment of atypical expression phenotypes in children with autism spectrum disorder.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Exploring the Relationship Between Empathy and Social Skills for Individuals with Different Forms of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Oxytocin in autism: Rethinking treatment and research through a neurodivergent perspective.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Sensory-movement underpinnings of lifelong neurodivergence: getting a grip on autism.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2025Article
- Exploring companion robots for children with autism spectrum disorder: a reflexive thematic analysis in specialist dental care.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Article
- A sensorimotor basis for facial expressivity differences in autism.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Neurodivergence, intersectionality, and eating disorders: a lived experience-led narrative review.Journal of eating disorders · 2024Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Background: There is a dominant discourse, both in clinical texts and throughout the academic literature, that autistic people lack empathy; however, over the past decade, both clinicians and academics have increasingly rejected deficit-based descriptions of autism in favor of more nuanced explanations of the experience of autistic individuals in a social world. Methods: This study asked 76 autistic individuals about their own experience of empathy and the oft-cited empathy deficit. Data were thematically analyzed and revealed a wide array of empathic self-concepts among respondents. Results: Notably, there was a high proportion of hyper-empathic experiences. Many respondents reported their empathic responses to be overwhelming, or even distressing. These different experiences of empathy contrast with societal expectations of empathy, which often result in additional labor for autistic people as they navigate the non-autistic centered world. Conclusion: Although the academic literature is, in some areas, slowly moving away from a deficit perspective, more broadly there is still a negative impact from misconceptions around autistic people and empathy. Further work needs to be done to not only explore this misconception at a societal (rather than academic) level, but also better bridge the gap around the changing ideas of empathy and real-world understanding of autistic empathy.
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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.