Substantial gains have been made over the past few decades
in improving understanding of autism. Most people are now aware of the
existence of autism[1]
and a range of high profile media campaigns are generally helping to improve
public understanding of autism[2].
However, in the media particularly striking autistic individuals, for example
those with savant skills or with particularly challenging behaviour, tend to be
over represented[3][4].
We realised that before designing research interventions
aimed to improve public perceptions of autism, we needed to know what the
stereotype of autism is and whether any character traits that people associate
with autism are seen as being particularly negative. Stereotypes are short-cuts
or sets of traits and characteristics that society ascribes to a particular
social group. When people don’t have direct experience of members of a
particular social group, they often rely on stereotypes to guide judgements
towards members of that social group[5].
So what is the “autistic stereotype”?
We focussed our recently published research on finding
out what the stereotype of autism is among university students, and in
particular those students who did not have direct experience of autism (weren’t
themselves autistic and did not have a family member or close friend who was
autistic) as these are the people who would most likely use stereotypes to
guide their judgements. 163 students who had lived in the UK for at least 5
years completed our survey. The students were asked to report the beliefs that
they felt society as a whole holds of individuals with Autism Spectrum
Conditions. We asked the question this way as it has previously been shown that
this is an effective way to accurately elicit stereotypes and reduce the
likelihood that people will answer in line with what they believe a socially
desirable answer to be[6].
We found that the stereotype was that autistic people have
poor social skills, are introverted and withdrawn, are poor communicators, and
have difficult personality traits or behaviours. It was notable that many of
the positive skills and traits often expressed by autistic people, such as good
attention to detail, honesty, good rote memory, enhanced perception, were
absent from the stereotype. Only two of the top 10 stereotypic traits that
emerged were rated as positive. These were “high intelligence” and “special
abilities”. We hope that this research can be a starting point for improving
perceptions of autism, forming the basis for interventions designed to reduce
reliance on stereotypes of autistic people. We are now looking for ways to
improve public perceptions of autism via research interventions to be conducted
on people who are not autistic, and by asking autistic adults to discuss how they feel they are perceived by others in society. We need to break down the barriers that
autistic people face on a daily basis and change societal attitudes so that
neurodiversity is more effectively embraced!
For the full article see: Wood, C. & Freeth, M., (2016)
Students’ Stereotypes of Autism. Journal
of Educational Issues, 2 (2), 131-140.
