Autistic adults tend to be more generous towards strangers, study finds

A study in Germany found that autistic adults tend to be more generous towards strangers compared to people without this disorder. In a task where they had to divide money between individuals, they were more prone to split the money equally regardless of how close they felt to the person they were sharing the money with. The research was published in the journal Autism.

The abilities to cooperate with others and share resources is one of the hallmarks of human society. It is a trait at the very foundation of the human civilization, so important that scientists studying ancient humans often interpret signs of resource sharing and cooperation as signs of a developed civilization.

However, humans typically exhibit reluctance to share their resources equally with everyone. Generosity among humans tends to diminish as social distance increases. While individuals might share everything with their family, their readiness to share with those they are less close to decreases significantly and may vanish entirely with strangers.

This behavior is known as social discounting. Although personality traits such as altruism and empathy can lead to greater generosity towards strangers, social discounting remains prevalent even among highly empathetic and altruistic individuals.

In their new study, Paul A.G. Forbes and his colleagues wanted to investigate the phenomenon of social discounting in autistic individuals. They were particularly interested in determining whether the framing of situations would influence the generosity of autistic individuals towards others, depending on their social distance.

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Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. People with autism tend to show marked differences in social interaction and communication compared to people without this disorder. The study authors were interested in finding out if and how much this extends to social discounting.

The study included 28 autistic individuals and 25 non-autistic participants, matched for age and gender, with an average age of 30 years. The non-autistic group was generally more educated, with 76% holding a university degree, compared to 32% in the autistic group.

Participants were asked to complete a social discounting task, which began with an explanation of social distance, referring to how emotionally close someone is to the participant. A scale was displayed on a screen showing figures at various distances from the participant’s avatar, indicating different levels of social distance. The researchers told the participants to imagine that the distance of that figure from their avatar on the picture represents how socially distant that person is from them.

Participants then completed a series of tasks where they had to decide how to distribute money between themselves and that other figure. In the “gain scenario,” they could split the money equally or keep a larger share for themselves, leaving the other with nothing. In the “loss prevention scenario,” they were informed that the other person already possessed 75 EUR, and they could choose to receive another 75 EUR for themselves, leaving the other’s amount unchanged, or obtain a larger sum for themselves, resulting in the other person losing their 75 EUR.

The researchers varied the difference in monetary gain between equitable distribution and choosing a larger share for oneself, referring to this difference as “money forgone.” For example, if splitting equally gives the participant 75 EUR and taking a larger amount (while giving nothing to the other) yields 115 EUR, this means that a participant choosing to split has forgone 40 EUR (115 EUR – 75 EUR = 40 EUR).

Results showed that the average amount of money forgone decreased with increasing social distance. In other words, the more socially distant the other figure was, the more likely participants were to take a larger amount for themselves while giving nothing to the other person. While this trend was present in both autistic individuals and those without autism, it was much less pronounced in autistic individuals. Individuals with autism tended to be more generous towards people they did not see as close to them.

Individuals without autism were also more affected by framing. In a situation where the decision could result in a gain for the other person, individuals without autism were much more likely to not give the other anything (i.e., were less inclined to forgo money) compared to autistic individuals. These individuals were more likely to forgo money if not doing that would create a loss for the other person. This difference in forgone money in the two situations was present in autistic participants as well, but it was very slight.

“We show that compared to a neurotypical group, autistic adults were more generous to other people, which was driven by a greater generosity to more socially distant others. We propose that this increased generosity to strangers is driven by autistic adults implementing fairness norms more consistently and differences in sensitivity to social information,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on differences in social decision-making between autistic individuals and people without this disorder. However, it should be noted that the number of participants of this study was very small. Additionally, the decisions made involved small amounts of money and imaginary figures. Results might not be the same if decisions involved more substantial amounts of money and real people.

The paper, “Autistic adults show enhanced generosity to socially distant others,” was authored by Paul A.G. Forbes, Irini Chaliani, Leonhard Schilbach, and Tobias Kalenscher.