title: Implicit Social Biases in People With Autism.
abstract: Implicit social biases are ubiquitous and are known to influence social behavior. A core diagnostic criterion of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is abnormal social behavior. We investigated the extent to which individuals with ASD might show a specific attenuation of implicit social biases, using Implicit Association Tests (IATs) involving social (gender, race) and nonsocial (nature, shoes) categories. High-functioning adults with ASD showed intact but reduced IAT effects relative to healthy control participants. We observed no selective attenuation of implicit social (vs. nonsocial) biases in our ASD population. To extend these results, we supplemented our healthy control data with data collected from a large online sample from the general population and explored correlations between autistic traits and IAT effects. We observed no systematic relationship between autistic traits and implicit social biases in our online and control samples. Taken together, these results suggest that implicit social biases, as measured by the IAT, are largely intact in ASD.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University.
authors.forename: Elina
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Birmingham
authors.affiliation: Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology dstanley@caltech.edu.
authors.forename: Damian
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stanley
authors.affiliation: Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Remya
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nair
authors.affiliation: Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology.
authors.forename: Ralph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Adolphs
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012919:Social Behavior; D012923:Social Class; D013240:Stereotyping; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Implicit Association Test (IAT); autism spectrum disorder (ASD); implicit bias; open data; open materials; prejudice; stereotype