Intergroup bias in punishing behaviors of adults with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Groups are essential elements of society, and humans, by nature, commonly manifest intergroup bias (i.e., behave more positively toward an ingroup member than toward an outgroup member). Despite the growing evidence of various types of altered decision-making in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), their behavior under the situation involving group membership remains largely unexplored. By modifying a third-party punishment paradigm, we investigated intergroup bias in individuals with ASD and typical development (TD). In our experiment, participants who were considered as the third party observed a dictator game wherein proposers could decide how to distribute a provided amount of money while receivers could only accept unconditionally. Participants were confronted with two different group situations: the proposer was an ingroup member and the recipient was an outgroup member (IN/OUT condition) or the proposer was an outgroup member and the recipient was an ingroup member (OUT/IN condition). Participants with TD punished proposers more severely when violating social norms in the OUT/IN condition than in IN/OUT condition, indicating that their decisions were influenced by the intergroup context. This intergroup bias was attenuated in individuals with ASD. Our findings deepen the understanding of altered decision-making and socioeconomic behaviors in individuals with ASD.

Can membership modulate the social abilities of autistic people? An intergroup bias in smile perception

“…Considering results in the recent autism literature, this is consistent with some studies on the cross-race effect (Wilson et al, 2011;Yi et al, 2016;Yi et al, 2015), although differs from a number of other studies (Hadad et al, 2019;Kang et al, 2020). It is possible that these latter studies involved tasks that autistic people struggled more with, such as judging social norms (Qian et al, 2022) and direct gaze aversion (Uono et al, 2021), making intergroup modulation harder to detect, whilst we were using a task that autistic were capable of, albeit to a lesser extent than non-autistic people (see below).…”

“…While no study has assessed an intergroup bias in smile authenticity judgements in autism, a few recent studies have suggested that intergroup bias is attenuated and even absent in autistic people in studies using definite intergroup boundaries (e.g., nationality) and in nonautistic adults with high autistic traits in studies using minimal group settings. Qian et al (2022) investigated intergroup bias in "third-party punishment" behaviours in autistic adults and found that non-autistic adults penalised outgroup members more harshly than ingroup members by removing money, but this ingroup favouritism was attenuated in autistic adults.…”

“…Although it is hotly debated, autistic people have been widely reported to show empathic difficulties (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004;Bird & Viding, 2014;Smith, 2009). This is related not only to their difficulties in identifying emotional expressions (Dyck et al, 2001;Sucksmith et al, 2013) but also to their attenuated favouritism towards ingroup members (Qian et al, 2022;Vaucheret Paz et al, 2020). However, it should not be overlooked that the prevalence of alexithymia, referring to difficulties in identifying and describing one's own emotions, is significantly higher in autism than in the general population (Hill et al, 2004;Salminen et al, 1999;Shah et al, 2016).…”