Non-Clinical Autistic Traits Correlate With Social and Ethical but Not With Financial and Recreational Risk-Taking

Abstract

Previous research into uncertain and risky decision-making in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been inconclusive, with some studies reporting less uncertain and risky decisions by persons with ASD compared to neurotypicals, but other studies failing to find such effects. A possible explanation for these inconsistent findings is that aberrant decision-making in ASD is domain-specific, and only manifests itself in domains related to autism symptomatology. The present study examines this premise by correlating self-reported autistic traits to individuals' intention to engage in risky behaviours, their perception of how risky these behaviours are, and the amount of benefit they expect to obtain from engaging in them; all for five separate domains of decision-making: social, ethical, recreational, health/safety, and financial. In line with the hypotheses, persons with higher autistic traits reported reduced intention to engage in risky social behaviours and increased intention to engage in risky ethical behaviours. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between autistic traits and risk perception in the social domain, indicating that persons with higher autistic traits perceive social behaviours as riskier than do persons with lower autistic traits. Correlations between autistic traits and individuals' intention to engage in risky recreational and financial behaviours were small, and supported the null hypothesis (as shown by Bayes Factors). Given that most studies on uncertain and risky decision-making take place in a financial context, the present results could explain previous inconsistent findings on decision-making in ASD. Therefore, future studies should also examine decision-making outside the financial realm.

Quality of life, functional impairment and continuous performance task event‐related potentials (ERPs) in young adults with ADHD and autism: A twin study

“…Autism was associated both phenotypically and genetically with impairment in social functioning consistent with central deficits in social communication in the condition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). In accordance with previous findings (De Groot, 2020 ; South et al., 2014 ), autism also showed a significant relationship with decreased risk raking; though to date no other study has demonstrated our finding of genetic contributions to this overlap. It has been suggested that reduced risk‐taking in autism is related to decreased motivation to engage in social activities, which results in a lack of experience, which may in turn result in wariness for such activities (Chevallier et al., 2012 ; De Groot, 2020 ).…”

“…Autism was associated both phenotypically and genetically with impairment in social functioning consistent with central deficits in social communication in the condition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In accordance with previous findings (De Groot, 2020;South et al, 2014), autism also showed a significant relationship with decreased risk raking; though to date no other Note: ADHD and autism variables were only used to avoid bias due to using an enriched study sample. The phenotypic correlations estimated with the trivariate model between ADHD or autism and these ERP factors or questionnaires were very similar to the ones reported with bivariate models (Tables 1 and 2).…”

“…study has demonstrated our finding of genetic contributions to this overlap. It has been suggested that reduced risk-taking in autism is related to decreased motivation to engage in social activities, which results in a lack of experience, which may in turn result in wariness for such activities (Chevallier et al, 2012;De Groot, 2020). Alternatively, it has been suggested that the perception of risk may be inherent to the lack of engagement in social activities in autism (De Groot, 2020).…”

“…First, we investigated the relationship between QoL and the WFIRS and ADHD and autism in young adulthood. We expected decreased QoL and higher functional impairment for both ADHD and autism (De Groot, 2020;Mason et al, 2018;Quintero et al, 2019). Second, we investigated the relationship between CPT-OX ERPs and ADHD and autism.…”