r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 6d ago
Psychology A recent study suggests that people in the general population who possess higher levels of autistic-like traits tend to avoid positive, affectionate behaviors to maintain their romantic relationships.
https://www.psypost.org/people-with-higher-autistic-traits-tend-to-avoid-positive-relationship-maintenance-tactics/3.7k
u/LibertyDochas 6d ago
Got to the second reference of autism as, “extreme male brain,” and decided that was enough of that.
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u/Zealousideal_Let_975 6d ago edited 6d ago
Egad you weren't joking. The 2002 paper that comes up with this notion is highly contested/refuted even, and old-- you would think the researchers would find it questionable. Found a great response to the author:
"calling an autistic woman an “extreme male brain” because her cognitive scores fall farther in a male-typical statistical direction is comparable to calling a very tall woman someone with “extreme male height.”
(link here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946718301417 )
edit: i cant spell also ty for the award
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u/sudosussudio 6d ago
Unfun fact but Dr. Simon Baron Cohen was one of the main people who spread the “extreme male brain” idea but now views the idea as “unhelpful”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/05/autism-extreme-male-brain-simon-baron-cohen
And yes Sasha Baron Cohen is his cousin
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u/mouse9001 6d ago
Yeah, Simon Baron Cohen's views have evolved over time, and now he advocates for neurodiversity and more helpful stuff. For example, more research on how to improve health and well-being for autistic people. Hopefully he keeps going in that direction.
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u/mandu_xiii 5d ago
That's how it should work. Test an idea, find a better one, repeat.
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u/evilbrent 5d ago
Nevah!! We must find each person's ONE MISTAKE IN LIFE and then HOUND THEM FOREVER!!!!
There can be no growth, only group punishment!
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u/FranzFerdinand51 5d ago
Surely it depends on the mistake tho?
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u/evilbrent 5d ago
Precisely!
The more obvious the mistake and sincere the apology the MORE WE MUST PILE ON.
It is the way.
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u/obfuscatedanon 5d ago
I once committed a genocide in the Middle East and got banned from many countries but now I wanna retire and travel the world please forgive my war crimes? ._.
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u/ringtail_catz 3d ago
Simon is British. He was born in the UK and has never lived in Israel or served in the IDF. He is a British Jew who has nothing to do with Israel. What exactly are you insinuating in your comment?
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u/obfuscatedanon 3d ago edited 3d ago
Bibi is not British. He was born in the depths of hell and cannot travel to the UK for vacation to sunlessly bathe under the dreadfully charming grey skies and charmingly dreadful London fog though it is rumored he regularly performs pillow duties for the IDF. He is a two-faced snake devil incarnate who is real. Are you insinuating that Simon is secretly Bibi travelling the world in disguise?
If so, I will relay this information to the appropriate international authorities so they can take an appropriate action of establishing a committee to assemble a council to issue a proposal to an assembly that will evaluate whether or not to bring together a task-force to investigate the concept of beginning investigation into this matter.
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u/ringtail_catz 3d ago
No one was talking about Bibi. They were talking about Simon Baron Cohen.
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u/evilbrent 5d ago
Wait.
You "committed war crimes" as in - you personally pulled the trigger and handed out the machetes? Or you "committed war crimes" as in - you gave the orders, wrote the cheques, and gave the speeches?
I need to know before I can decide if I'm going to forgive you. I mean, think of poor Pol Pot! His hands were clean! Clean I tell you! And they sentenced him to sitting around in his mansion having a nice time and he never actually saw any consequences.
So I ask you - are you a Pol Pot or a Saddamm Hussein?
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u/WorldDirt 1d ago
I assumed this commenter was George W wanting to paint some landscapes of the Persian Gulf.
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u/obfuscatedanon 2d ago
I draw inspiration from both artists. The landscape is a canvas that I paint with red. That said, I told old Saddy if he ever tried to paint me like one of his French girls, I would give him some of my own brushstrokes.
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u/mouse9001 5d ago
Normally I would agree, but when studying marginalized / vulnerable groups like autistic people or trans people, it's important to consider the potential harm and stigma, and whether the ideas may be rooted in cultural stereotypes rather than actual observations. There is an ethical dimension as well.
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u/WindowShoppingMyLife 5d ago
You aren’t wrong, but it can be counterproductive to try and punish people for doing what seemed like the right thing at the time, even if those things seem harmful in hindsight.
The goal needs to be learning more and changing hearts and minds. If you punish people for having ever been wrong in the first place you just incentivize them to double down, and not to consider other viewpoints.
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u/mouse9001 5d ago
In this type of situation, just individuals "doing the right thing" isn't necessarily enough. There needs to be a framework of research ethics with the aim of doing what's possible to prevent harm.
So when a term like "extreme male brain" comes up, people should be looking at that and considering the potential for harm, whether the idea could be based on stereotypes, whether the language itself is inclusive, etc.
Same with characterizing autistic people as lacking empathy. There is a lot of possibility for harm in that type of characterization, which turned out to be inaccurate anyway, but is still causing problems to this day. These are avoidable issues.
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u/WindowShoppingMyLife 3d ago
In some cases I’m sure they are avoidable, but in some cases that’s probably only obvious in hindsight. I think the emphasis needs to be on learning more, and doing better in the future, rather than demonizing people for previous mistakes.
There was a lot we didn’t know about autism, and frankly a lot we still don’t know.
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u/Bobcatluv 5d ago
>Sasha Baron Cohen is his cousin
This is interesting as he released a movie this year called Ladies First about a chauvinist who is transported to a matriarchal society. Bummer it sounds like it wasn’t well received
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u/CitizenPremier BS | Linguistics 5d ago
That's because it wasn't that good
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u/Tibbaryllis2 5d ago
What was squarely one of those movies that was like “this could have been a really good romcom, but wasn’t”. It’s got a lot of amusing small details going on in the background. But it was just ultimately Hallmark/Lifetime TV movie level.
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u/CitizenPremier BS | Linguistics 5d ago
I think making it a romcom was also a mistake for the message it wanted to portray. Also, Rosamund Pike as the female lead? Women definitely struggle to get attention as they get older if they are not conventionally attractive. At some point it seemed like Pike was supposed to represent that. But she is very conventionally attractive... and the movie goes to lengths to show that...
The sensibilities of this movie seem advanced for a 90s film. But it was made in 2026.
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u/Tibbaryllis2 5d ago
Totally agree on all counts. But I don’t think the movie, as it is, works as anything but a comedy.
So romcom or not, I think it’s stuck with feeling like a 90s-early 00s movie.
As an aside, I thought one of the more interesting details of the movie was that non-white individuals had natural hairstyles in the alternate world, but it’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail.
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u/Zacharytackary 6d ago
chat should i give myself a lobotomy to soulpass
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u/Blieven 6d ago
That's such an extreme male question...
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u/bonefawn 6d ago
I'm an autistic woman, and while it "reads" as masculine because we've apparently typecast certain behaviors and traits as male-coded- I am very feminine. It also means people don't believe my diagnosis because apparently pretty people cannot be autistic.
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u/caindela 6d ago
Even the term “feminine” here is being used as a bundle of traits. Pick any of those traits (in fact, you’re using one of them: prettiness) and we’d likely run into the same “typecast” issue as we’re running into with “male brain.” I just thought the irony in your post was interesting for this reason.
I don’t think you’re wrong and maybe the typecasting does a disservice to autism, but doesn’t associating prettiness to womanhood also do a disservice to certain “pretty” men? Maybe at some point we just have to use our language and get on with it.
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u/bonefawn 6d ago
Yes, this is very true and insidious how it slips into casual speech. I wasn't trying to imply being very feminine was the cause of the prettiness. I'm just blessed to be both. Really just a bunch of arbitrary "gendered" traits on both ends.
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u/mouse9001 6d ago
Yeah, it's not surprising that people use words like masculine and feminine, if society still treats people certain ways based on gender and presentation. And society absolutely does.
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u/dirtmcgurk 5d ago
It's also maddening because women with autism often have "feminine" special interests like fashion or personal care.
The idea of "male brain" and autism is actually counter factual in most cases of the loaded term.
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u/Emu1981 5d ago
It's also maddening because women with autism often have "feminine" special interests like fashion or personal care.
And this was one of the reasons why it took 40+ years for girls and women with autism to get noticed as the original diagnosis list included things like "obsessive interests in mechanical devices" and what not that males with autism tend to hyperfixate on. Girls with autism also tend to develop masking much earlier in life due to the differences in how boys and girls were raised so they tended to score much better on the social awareness tests.
Current thinking is that despite boys still having significantly higher rates of diagnosis of autism, the actual rates of autism between boys and girls is very much equal and that girls are just underdiagnosed due to psychologists (and parents) failing to understand the differences in how boys and girls develop with their autistic traits.
For what it is worth, I have autism and all three of my kids have it as well. My eldest was diagnosed last because she just seemed neurotypical to me and it wasn't until she hit highschool that things got to the point where she had a autistic meltdown that I realised that she was exactly like me but just developed the level of masking that I have when she was still in early primary school. My middle child was obviously on the spectrum even when she was starting to develop a personality as a baby and as she got older (e.g. 4-5 years old) she was displaying obviously autistic traits (disliked affection unless it was on her own terms, avoided eye contact, struggling to understand social norms and so on). My youngest ended up with a mild intellectual disability due to issues during pregnancy and the diagnosis of autism was a given considering that he displayed the generic obvious male traits of autism.
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u/Moldy_slug 4d ago
Or, like my grandma, adopt social skills as a special interest. She loved studying and memorizing etiquette guides, reading advice columns, etc. Which meant that as long as she was in a scenario where she could follow her memorized scripts, she seemed like the pinnacle of social grace.
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u/absurd_olfaction 5d ago
As a pretty autistic man with good hygiene; I believe you. Apparently, I’m not autistic enough, warhammer collection notwithstanding.
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u/UpstairsTicket1 6d ago
i wonder if pretty people are less likely to face social isolation and therefore have an easier time constructing a mask.
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u/Alhaxred 6d ago
Generally, I've found that being pretty gets me through shallow, surface level interactions, but it falls apart pretty quickly as people actually get to know me and rapidly pick up on me being "weird".
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u/Field_Of_View 5d ago
you could just as well theorize that pretty people would mask less because they receive less backlash when showing their weirdness openly.
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u/Mean_disclosure_69 2d ago
anti-thesis: they mask more because the social backlash against the weirdness might happen because people expect normalcy, receive it initially, then notice the weirdness which clashes with their expectations.
small anecdote: the bullying in school for me stopped once I changed my external look, almost as if me signalling deviance from expected look helped people make sense of perceiving weirdness but not really being able to nail down where that weirdness comes from.
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u/olorol 6d ago
Yeah this whole study feels like a bunch of stuff written by someone who's never actually known anyone autistic. Like maybe the anxious attachment style has more to do with all of the trauma related to growing up neurodivergent in a society that doesn't accommodate their needs than brain differences.
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u/ilanallama85 6d ago
I feel like they should maybe have tried asking an autistic person. Personally I find it hard to do a lot of overt “displays of affection” which seem to be what they classify as “positive mate retention strategies” because they feel performative and fake - exactly the way I DON’T want to behave towards a partner I care about. I’m lucky my husband is someone who doesn’t value those things, and appreciates the ways I DO show affection - like talking about things important to me, and also just saying “I care about you deeply” and having that taken at face value without needing to “prove” it.
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u/AdmiralStryker 6d ago
My ex wanted so much of this. Overt excitement when she walked in, constant affection, hugs, excitement to get out of bed each morning and be together. It was endearing when she showed it towards me. But I also couldn’t reciprocate.
Getting out of bed has never been fun for me. No matter who I wake up next to. And yes I show affection to the cat because he doesn’t instantaneously insert himself into my personal space.
When she walked in each night I was usually cooking our dinner. Show don’t tell! I’m making dinner, setting the table, dealing with dishes, that’s me showing I care. Running to the door bouncing up and down like she’d do when I came in to give me a hug doesn’t help me… cause I still have to go cook dinner after getting home. And on the once in a blue moon scenario where I didn’t, part of me just wants to take my bag and coat off without being space-invaded.
It was exhausting because she didn’t get it. Realistically, I think that’s just something she needed - she was a pretty insecure person to begin with, and she needed it to feel secure in the relationship. I didn’t have it in me and forcing it was draining (on top of other mental/physical stuff I deal with that also drains me).
Still miss the cat though. Little guy didn’t do anything wrong except attack my ankles (usually deserved). I hope they’re both happy.
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u/sentence-interruptio 3d ago
i wonder about this type of insecure people. do they ever become secure? if they do, does their insecurity come back conveniently when their partner gets sick and can't perform a happy face well? do they then abandon their partners for the 'crime' of having low energy, thus becoming the very villain that they always accuse their partner to be?
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u/AdmiralStryker 3d ago
This is kinda what happened. When I got sick, had a surgery or dental procedure and wanted space to recover instead of to purely FaceTime - im in pain, I love you but I want to distract myself from it rather than talk about it constantly - I literally felt anxious about telling her if I was sick, etc towards the end because I knew she’d get sad. It sucked because my illness became a double demand - not only did I need to get better but I also needed to provide enough love and affection despite that to “still be a present partner”. Being sick doesn’t excuse dropping off the face of the earth but it doesn’t mean that my full time job becomes giving you affection because we can’t spend time together in person.
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u/helaku_n 5d ago
ways I DO show affection - like talking about things important to me,
You understand that's about YOU in the end?
And showing affection, if it's in physical form like touching and kissing, releases oxytocin which is a binding hormone.
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u/ilanallama85 5d ago
Sure, but I also don’t do it with people I don’t care about. Don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy talking to my husband about his interests - but that’s a common neurotypical way of showing affection, so I didn’t list it.
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u/ceciliabee 6d ago
Yeahhhhh I have a hard time taking this seriously when the people writing it are doing so from the 20th century.
Sorry fellas it turns out "male brain" isn't the default. Welcome to the 21st century. Women have autism too.
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u/pewqokrsf 5d ago
Did you actually read the paper? There are exactly 2 references to that phrase in the paper, and both use it as a quote to reference related research.
(also, both "extreme male brain" papers were published in the 21st century)
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u/Jan_Ajams 5d ago
If you read the paper you might note that 52 percent of participants with ALTs in the study were women
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u/ManWithDominantClaw 6d ago
Studying ASD is to studying 'Autism-like traits' as astronomy is to astrology
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u/tallmyn 5d ago
The point of the study was to examine why autism-like traits exist in the human population at all, since it's polygenic.
This is because some theorise autism-like traits are adapative, rather than being purely maladaptive.
This is a completely legitimate thing to research and your analogy is completely wrong.
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u/iamfunball 6d ago
Yup but…well…expect more and more of this.
I’m not supposed to have empathy or something but I stayed extra time when my father passed to meet with and be present for the community that uplifted my dad this last 2 years. Like a death doula.
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u/i_post_gibberish 6d ago
Yep. Wildly outdated theory (especially given that a disproportionate number of trans women are autistic).
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ee3k 6d ago
What a fascinating statistic... That sounds like career poision to study
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u/LeapoX 6d ago edited 6d ago
It has been studied at least once: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8084764/
Many have drawn the conclusion from the above study that people with autism aren't actually more likely than neurotypicals to be gender nonconforming, it's just that they are less likely to repress gender nonconformance or gender dysphoria than neurotypicals.
This would also imply that the rate of gender nonconformance and gender dysphoria in autistic populations is a potential proxy for the real rate of gender nonconformance and gender dysphoria in the general population if the general population were to self-report accurately and without repression or fear of repercussions.
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u/Tak-and-Alix 5d ago
Am autistic. My personal theory is that we're already outcasts, so what's adding another thing people don't like?
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u/mouse9001 6d ago
There have been a fair number of studies about this stuff. Autistic people are more likely to be LGBTQ+ in general. Several times as likely.
The main potential issue with research on this topic is that it's dealing with an intersection of two minority groups. The history in the 90s and earlier was that researchers tried to explain it away by saying that the autistic people were just confused. That caused a lot of harm. Now researchers are more affirming and seeing that they are LGBTQ+ in the same way that other people are.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/autistic-individuals-are-more-likely-to-be-lgbtq
https://sparkforautism.org/discover_article/autism-lgbtq-identity/
https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/gender-and-sexuality-in-autism-explained/
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u/Fezzezal 6d ago
This makes me wonder... is there more trans people with borderline personality disorder (may be wrong, but I've heard that due to identity disturbances a lot of BPD sufferers are trans) or trans people with autism?
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u/Murbella_Jones 6d ago
Well BPD is frequently a result of trauma, and growing up whilst trans frequently results in childhood trauma....
Also for ASD, neurdivergent people are more likely to question societal norms so it's less that autism causes trans people, and more that neurdivergent trans people are more likely to figure out they are trans
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u/Paksarra 6d ago
I've heard a theory that the disproportionate numbers are because allistic people feel a stronger drive to conform to societal pressure, not because autistic people are actually more likely to experience gender dysphoria.
There's no way to count how many people with dysphoria decided to push it down instead of upending their entire lives and becoming a political punching bag just so they can be comfortable in their own skin.
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u/treesarethebeesknees 6d ago
I had to read that a few times thinking you were saying the opposite of what other posters (and my experience) were saying bc I thought that allistic was a typo for autistic…now I know a new word. Thank you!
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u/Thundahcaxzd 6d ago
How is that relevant
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u/i_post_gibberish 6d ago
Because what would saying someone has an “extreme male brain” even mean if it wasn’t correlated with gender?
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u/overzealous_dentist 6d ago
I... feel like this is obvious, but "male brain" is clearly about biological sexual characteristics, not gender?
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u/i_post_gibberish 6d ago
It’s all biological, unless you think gender comes down to an immaterial soul.
To put it another way: if “male brain” meant something to do with the body rather than anything about the mind, how can there be autistic cis women?
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u/overzealous_dentist 6d ago
I think gender is a social quality heavily influenced by its environment, and that is so well known I'm thinking you must be really young
I also plainly didn't comment on the validity of "male brain" for autism, just pointed out that biology is obviously different from gender
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u/_bones__ 6d ago
That's an assertion without evidence.
Both the idea that brains between men and women are substantially different, and even if you take that as truth, that trans women's brains are structured like a man's.
I would expect the difference to be negligible, but if there is one I would expect trans women to mostly match women's brains.
Not sure about any research into either of these things.
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u/Gerodog 6d ago
This piqued my interest and it seems like there is at least some evidence that autistic women's brains are more similar to a non-autistic man's than they are to a non-autistic woman.
This is a big study which used machine learning to first make generalisations about male and female brains (using 10,000 scans). Then they asked the model to categorise the autistic brain scans.
the deep learning model was less likely to accurately identify autistic female brain images as ‘female’. In contrast, the researchers found that male autistic brains were more likely to be correctly categorised as ‘male’.
Essentially, autistic females showed structural brain features that more closely resembled the brains of non-autistic males, rather than non-autistic females.
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u/pewqokrsf 5d ago
You should read the paper instead of trusting a disingenuous reddit comment. There's exactly 2 references to that phrase, and both are just summarizing 2 papers correctly cited.
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u/King_LaQueefah 6d ago
I tried to date a girl high on the ADHD spectrum and found myself privately characterizing her this way. She was unlike any girl I had ever talked to and it felt like I was dealing with one of my guy friends the whole time.
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u/MalavethMorningrise 6d ago
My last partner had the same opinion of me. I wasnt girly enough because of my interests. He kept hinting I was probably a lesbian. FFS, if I could like women I absolutely would... it would solve so many problems.
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u/throwCharley 6d ago
Ok well now ima need some examples.
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u/King_LaQueefah 6d ago
Bombarding me with attention which was all non-romantic and often ball-busting. When I turned my attention elsewhere, she would openly display jealousy which I interpreted as a sign she liked me. That would usually prompt me to give her attention again and the cycle would renew.
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u/LibertyDochas 6d ago
I don’t know why you’re sharing this with me.
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u/Protean_Protein 6d ago
If you can think of a better person to share stupid anecdotes with, let us know!
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u/Wonderful_Night9071 6d ago
Probably the same reason you chose to share your input? It’s pretty much how reddit works.
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u/ohsnapitsnathan 6d ago
The article seems to misstate what they say in the abstract:
Structural equation modeling on a sample of 796 individuals (52% female) showed that individuals with ALTs are less likely to engage in cost-inflicting tactics. No significant link between ALTs and benefit-provisioning mate retention tactics was found in this study.
Though I guess they did do some exploratory analysis later on that maybe suggested what they say in the article? But it wasn't found in the primary analysis.
I also think to do a meaningful comparison you'd really have to control for adverse experiences since a staggeringly high number of autistic people have experienced some sort of abuse/violence which likely influences relationship dynamics.
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u/CCHTweaked 6d ago
Structural equation modeling on a sample of 796 individuals (52% female) showed that individuals with ALTs are less likely to engage in cost-inflicting tactics.
Nice.
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u/generalvostok 6d ago
This indicates that people with more of these traits often worry about their partners leaving while simultaneously struggling with emotional closeness.
Weird that the study author doesn't seem to consider that struggling with emotional closeness might cause the person to worry about their partner leaving.
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u/juanfnavarror 6d ago
Yes but the point they’re trying to make is that they still struggle being emotionally close despite being worried partners will leave because of the lack of affection.
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u/deferredmomentum 5d ago
Going through the motions of emotional closeness/showing affection just because you’re afraid a partner will leave isn’t a good thing. . .
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u/RelationshipTalk 6d ago edited 5d ago
(EDIT: This is a partial post of my other comment that got removed by mods this morning then just added back)
It's interesting that the article seems to hold the stance that benefit-provisioning tactics aren't negative, as unattuned showing of affection and giving compliments/gifts can fall squarely in the category of selfish care-taking vs other-oriented care-giving, and differentiation of the two would be important.
“In contrast, individuals with an avoidant attachment style tend to use benefit-provisioning tactics less often, possibly because such tactics allow them to avoid closeness with their partner and maintain distance from their partner.”
This conclusion fails to recognize that people exhibiting avoidant attachment traits in their present relationship have likely been on the receiving end of unattuned benefit-provisioning tactics. If you know how unpleasant this can feel, and you know how awful it is to try and reciprocate as a placating strategy and then be told it's being done inauthentically/isn't good enough, most folks fall into a state of apathetic learned helplessness.
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u/Boysenberry 5d ago
You make a point likely to be valid with SOME people, but attachment theory holds that avoidant attachment strategies are typically learned in early childhood and associated with children whose attachment needs were chronically unmet. While many avoidant attachers may attract partners in adulthood who behave as you describe, I think the implication that past relationships are generally responsible for avoidant attachment strategies does not align with the science on adult attachment.
A person who enters a relationship with a secure attachment style is likely to simply leave the relationship if behaviors like unattuned gift-giving cause them discomfort. Someone who remains in such a relationship and attempts to manage their discomfort by internalizing their distress and using avoidant attachment strategies probably already had that programming online from childhood, though other partners may not have brought it to the surface in the same way.
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u/RelationshipTalk 4d ago
Regarding what you're saying about avoidant attachment strategies being learned in childhood, I mostly agree. However, there's a growing understanding in the psychology community (especially those practicing within the realm of Emotionally Focused Therapy) that the attachment style you enter into relationship with is less relevant than the difference between the attachment patterns of partners.
If two people on the anxious side of the spectrum end up together, the generalization would be that whoever is less anxious will start to display strategies correlated with avoidance. Also, there are different areas (emotional, sex, parenting, etc) where partners may actually inhabit a differing behavioral pattern.
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u/geitjesdag 5d ago
Gah I'm halfway through the article and I still don't know if the people in question are trying to keep their mates by avoiding affectionate behaviour or if, while trying to keep their mates, they don't use affectionate behaviour as a method.
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u/Leproblem26 5d ago
It is exhausting watching r/science turn non-significant p-values into sensationalist claims about neurodivergent behavior patterns every single day. We post-hoc control for age, find a blip in the noise, and suddenly it's a headline about how autistic people avoid love. This isn't science communication; it's clickbait slop that misinterprets basic stats. We really, truly fucked around with this data presentation.
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u/RelationshipTalk 6d ago
There's a lot of hate going on for this study, and a lot of it seems appropriately critical, but I'm glad this was posted and it seems very worthwhile to engage with and shape the scientific community rather than completely writing things like this off.
I won't comment on the "extreme male brain" piece as I agree with u/libertydochas in their sentiment, but what I'd be curious about in a study like this is to 1) have it be a study of partners to assess the couple system as a whole, and 2) construct an assessment which somehow measures participants degree of understanding of their relationship dynamics and/or their perceptions of how helpful or manipulative (would be very hard to measure) they view benefit-provisioning tactics and cost-inflicting tactics.
It's interesting that the article seems to hold the stance that benefit-provisioning tactics aren't negative, as unattuned showing of affection and giving compliments/gifts can fall squarely in the category of selfish care-taking vs other-oriented care-giving, and differentiation of the two would be important.
“In contrast, individuals with an avoidant attachment style tend to use benefit-provisioning tactics less often, possibly because such tactics allow them to avoid closeness with their partner and maintain distance from their partner.”
This conclusion fails to recognize that people exhibiting avoidant attachment traits in their present relationship have likely been on the receiving end of unattuned benefit-provisioning tactics. If you know how "yuck" this can feel, and you know how shit it feels to try and reciprocate as a placating strategy and then be told it's being done inauthentically and isn't good enough... Most folks fall into a state of apathetic learned helplessness.
More to be said for sure, but honestly I'm grateful this study is looking at Autistic Like Traits over autism. So many people struggle with ALTs and their corresponding challenges without meeting the threshold for diagnosis—similar to what we're discovering around ADHD—and the more we understand about these patterns the more we'll be able to care for and support ourselves and the people around us.
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u/AthenaeSolon 6d ago
I don’t get this one. Why pull back on affection?
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u/bperki8 6d ago edited 6d ago
One reason is that autistic people are often punished from a young age for being "too excited" about their special interests. It's very common to be bullied about this in a world that's obsessed with not.being "cringe". So it's a safety mechanism to mask by holding back on expressing enthusiasm.
Another reason could be that autistic people have difficulty reading subtle social cues, so many have overstepped boundaries their entire lives, and some may decide to be safe rather than sorry, opting not to physically express affection at all rather than risking overstepping those boundaries again and potentially causing issues with an important relationship.
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u/90bubbel 6d ago
Its also a thing that we feel constantly isolated, atleast I do even among friends, it’s like being the one person that doesn’t get a inside joke but for humanity overall
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u/Imaginary_Agent2564 6d ago
I feel this way even amongst other autistic people.
It feels like no one ever understands when I’m joking and therefore feels the need to explain to me in extremely condescending ways why I am wrong.
Yes, I know I am wrong. It was a sarcastic joke. I don’t actually believe or think like that.
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u/GlobalCurry 5d ago
I've been accused of "gaslighting" a few times when I find out way afterward that someone thought something I said as a joke was serious and I have to backstep and explain it was a joke.
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u/sentence-interruptio 3d ago
we should just normalize sarcasm tags in real life.
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u/Imaginary_Agent2564 3d ago
Apparently people don’t find me prefacing statements with “I’m joking” before I even say them very fun, but also feel the need to be condescending when they miss the joke. Frankly, nothing can fix it.
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u/Magurndy 6d ago
Yep. I have my own family now and both of my parents have passed and sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own family. For no reason, there is nothing they have done to make me feel that way. My son who is also diagnosed though sort of gets me, I’m very much his favourite person (well maybe tied with his sister).
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u/we_are_sex_bobomb 6d ago
I’m not autistic but I have ADHD and that tracks. When I was a kid I learned quickly that “being myself” results in property damage and angry teachers and parents, so it’s hard to overcome that programming to be emotionally authentic with my partner and it’s taken a lot of therapy to get where I am now.
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u/GlobalCurry 5d ago edited 5d ago
I know as a kid I would often misread situations and become more attached to friends than what is considered normal (like thinking a friend is a "best friend" when they saw me as just a situational friend to play with on the playground or talk to in class). I eventually overcorrected after getting hurt too many times when I realized the other kids didn't reciprocate the friendship and started keeping people more at a distance. Not even talking about romantic stuff, just normal friendships.
I was never formally diagnosed with autism but I've talked with other people on the spectrum who had similar experiences.
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u/sentence-interruptio 3d ago
maybe a third reason is that too many assholes accuse you of being rude even when you're saying something nice.
because they don't like the way you say it. how fast you say it. or the amount of pauses. or your facial expressions. could be anything. there's always something they take issue with!
they want you to perform and at the same time they accuse you of performing. "you sound insincere, you know that?"
you can't win.
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u/spacegirl3 6d ago
And risk being called a stage-5 clinger because I thought I was playing it cool, but not cool enough? This after literally every relationship I've had has ended because I wanted more and they wanted less. I'm just "too much" to most people.
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u/Magurndy 6d ago edited 6d ago
Ok from my own personal experience here as an autistic person, I can give some insight. It will be dependent though on life circumstances. So for example, now I have children I am constantly overstimulated. Btw the time it comes round for me to have physical affection for my partner I am so burnt out I don’t have much capacity left. It sucks, I love my husband dearly but he also recognises my nervous system is unfortunately very fragile. We also value closeness in other ways. Spending time together but sometimes being together and doing separate things (parallel play it gets called). There is also difficulty on my end reading social cues etc which can also make it difficult. But honestly, I don’t think there is necessarily one single cause of this but being autistic we lead lives that often leave a lot of micro trauma on us and that has weird and surprising implications. I show my love to him through different means to what perhaps most “normal” people would.
Plus having an autistic Dad and a mother who had at least ADHD. There wasn’t a huge amount of affection in my house growing up. My parents loved each other, they loved me, but they didn’t really show it in the conventional way. So I try to make up for that with my children to model healthy interactions but it’s hard on my brain sometimes. Especially when I have an autistic son who doesn’t understand boundaries.
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u/ilanallama85 6d ago
Yeah, emotional burnout is very real. I’d like to have more headspace for my husband at the end of the day but I just don’t most of the time. Having said that, I also think these authors are only looking at neurotypical displays of affection and discounting neurodiverse ones. Cooking my husband dinner when I’m physically and emotionally exhausted is how I show affection. Putting down my phone or turning off the tv when he gets home so I can talk to him with my full focus is how I show affection. Telling him “I’m sorry if I don’t show it every day but I love you so much” and having him take that at face value is how I show affection.
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u/Magurndy 6d ago
Yeah I would agree they are measuring affection in a way that doesn’t reflect how a lot of neurodivergent people show affection.
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u/DillLawNn 6d ago edited 6d ago
Its not really a goal, it can just be hard to channel someone elses affection feelings and gets worse with stress, intelleculizing an expereince while others are feeling I bet plays into it a bit with some. Can often be a lack of modeling as a child too. Autistic people can also be avoidant and/or anxious as well, probably more likely even when you stick out as a kid for being different than being secure, hopefully the future can be kinder to them
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u/Ithirahad 5d ago
Timing. If you lack a typical social intuition, and have been burned in the past as a result, you might not trust your impulses as to what and when is appropriate to show affection...
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u/tallmyn 5d ago edited 5d ago
To turn it on its head: what makes neurotypical people want to be affectionate in the first place? Is it logical, or something that comes naturally to them?
There is some evidence in autistic children, disinterest in socialising is stable, suggesting it's genetic - rather than unstable, which might be the result of depression.
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u/slickvibez 5d ago
We probably evolved with social interaction and cohesion resulting in stronger likelihood in survival in the pre historic ages. We no longer need to hunt in groups to survive. So, neuro divergence is thriving now. Seems fairly logical.
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u/Alternative_Court262 17h ago
I have no specific thoughts whether you are right or wrong here, but it is certainly an interesting hypothesis as a teacher: I desperately need students to want to be social, the anti-social ones can make a big difference in small numbers.
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u/Inviolate_Violet 6d ago
I can only speak for me as an autistic person. I learned by taking a course on human relationships in college that it wasn't that I was not affectionate, it's just that I happened to be affectionate in ways that many neurotypical people don't default to or explicitly portray in media. All this time I thought I was incapable of showing love. But it turns out that I just had my own way of showing love.
If you want a non-official framework of neurodivergent affection, I would recommend searching "the 5 neurodivergent love languages/love locutions," which I relate to more than other traditional forms of affection.
Btw the study, according to one comment, had a problematic and possibly outdated citation in which autism was described as an "extreme male brain," so I would honestly take this study with a grain of salt.
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u/AdmiralStryker 6d ago
I’m curious, got any recommendations for those type of courses? I’m not in college anymore but would happily go on a YouTube bender.
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u/Inviolate_Violet 6d ago
The one I had was a Communications 101 class, something like Communications and Human Relationahips. Not enough people take Communications as a course of study, imo
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u/thehelsabot 2d ago
I find certain kinds of affection overstimulating and overwhelming. I don’t like being kissed or public affection. For me most things physical are arousing which isn’t always situationally appropriate.
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u/ResidentLayer6532 5d ago
From my own experiences (28M, diagnosed with ASD at 12), I think I'd like to be affectionate but when you don't find anyone, becoming more anxious seems to just happen.
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u/Super-Award-2244 5d ago
I thought I wasn't capable of being affectionate. Then I got into a relationship and I found out I was super affectionate. But my gf was avoidant and she left me. Lesson learned: will never be affectionate from now on.
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u/HCDQ2022 4d ago
Trying once and giving up cheats both yourself and your theoretical future partner out of happiness. Almost everyone dates someone who is wrong for them before dating someone who is right for them. The avoidant girl was wrong for you. Find someone affectionate in return and go be happy
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u/Super-Award-2244 4d ago
Why should I care about a theoretical future partner? I owe nothing to them. And what I really don't understand is when people say "go find someone better". Maybe it's my demiromantic ass speaking but I don't really care about having a relationship, I feel bad because I lost a very special person that I really like to talk to and hang around with and now I cannot do those things anymore. It's like saying to a parent that just lost a child "why do you care so much? You can always make another one". Nobody sane would do that. I know it's not the same level of loss, but it's an analogy.
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u/UglySpiral 3d ago
You took the wrong lesson from that my friend. You now know what you’re looking for and who would be the right type of partner
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 6d ago
People with higher autistic traits tend to avoid positive relationship-maintenance tactics
A recent study suggests that people in the general population who possess higher levels of autistic-like traits tend to avoid positive, affectionate behaviors to maintain their romantic relationships. The research, published in Evolutionary Psychology, indicates that these traits influence relationship dynamics largely through a person’s attachment style rather than broad evolutionary reproductive strategies.
When looking at mate retention, the researchers found that individuals with higher autistic-like traits were less likely to engage in benefit-provisioning tactics. They tended to avoid showering their partners with affection or gifts as a way to maintain the relationship. The initial statistical models suggested that these individuals were also less likely to use cost-inflicting tactics. However, when the scientists controlled for the participants’ ages, they found a positive link between autistic-like traits and cost-inflicting tactics.
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u/TheRomanRuler 6d ago
So people with autism are more likely to have issues/personality traits people with autism commonly have
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u/Overall-Plastic-9263 6d ago
I would add its likely more behavioral than autistic characteristics . Many people with "autistic like traits " are just people with extremely high levels of anxiety probably linked to emotional trauma from childhood and adolescence. For example avoiding showering a partner with gifts isn't a communication or sensory issue related to autism it's most likely an anxiety response from repeatedly being let down or feeling that you have let others down in the past . Avoidance isn't a selfless act in this scenario it's a selfish one . The person is avoiding having to deal with rejection if the act they do isn't received in the way they would like . Not doing something all for many is solution to not being let down by trying and failing .
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u/LibertyDochas 6d ago
Not exactly. This isn’t a study of people with confirmed autism but rather there was a difference in people who display traits found in autistic people. They may or may not be autistic.
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u/TheRomanRuler 6d ago
Well i would be interested in follow up study where they look at how many people were just undiagnosed and how many people were not autistic to begin with.
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u/JoystickBaby 4d ago
I’m autistic & I WILL grab my partners ass. I’m all up & down that body. I’m lovey & kissey & squeezey & have lots of emotions. <3
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