Associations between autistic traits, depression, social anxiety and social rejection in autistic and non-autistic adults

Abstract

Autistic people frequently experience negative judgements from non-autistic people, often fuelled by misconceptions that autistic people lack empathy. Understanding responses to negative social judgement among autistic people is crucial because of the potential negative impact on wellbeing and future interactions. We investigated the role of autistic traits, social anxiety, and depression on behavioural indices of social rejection in 20 autistic (AUT; 11 males) and 40 non-autistic (N-AUT; 21 males) university students. Participants completed the Social Judgement Task (SJT) where they predicted whether they were liked by another person, then received feedback on whether those evaluations were correct. Participants also completed an Age Judgement Task (AJT) where they estimated the age of the pictured person. The AUT group had lower positive expectation scores, meaning less tendency to predict being liked. Across the whole sample, higher social anxiety predicted greater tendency to anticipate rejection from others, not autistic traits. These findings suggest early experiences of rejection might lead to a negative self-bias in autistic people and emphasise the importance of using a transdiagnostic approach by showing that social anxiety rather than autistic traits is associated with expectation of social rejection.

Validation of the abridged version of the autism-spectrum quotient (AQ-28) in the Arabic-speaking adult general population

“…Although they do not reach the threshold required for a clinical diagnosis of ASD, autistic traits may still be associated with a range of negative mental health consequences. There is consistent evidence to support that a high level of autistic traits in adults from the general population are signi cantly linked to increased levels of depression/anxiety (Gurbuz et al, 2024), more di culties in interpersonal relationships (Kanne et al, 2009), high levels of loneliness (Stice & Lavner, 2019;Suzuki et al, 2021), lower levels of cognitive exibility and uency (Pennisi et al, 2021), de cits in mentalizing abilities (Gökçen et al, 2016), less secure attachment (Ameli, Ghaderi, Aslezaker, et al, 2019;Gallitto & Leth-Steensen, 2015), decreased mental well-being (Stimpson et al, 2021), as well as more suicidal behavior (Richards et al, 2019) and death by suicide (Cassidy et al, 2022). These psychological and behavioral differences observed between people with high and low levels of autistic traits often mirror differences reported between individuals diagnosed with ASD and non-autistic individuals (Ingersoll & Wainer, 2014).…”