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Empathy works both ways: autistic people's feelings are often misunderstood
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
The idea that people with autism lack empathy is superficial, and people without autism may find it just as difficult to put themselves in another person's shoes as vice versa, a study suggests.
An article in Autism magazine turns the stereotype that people with autism have difficulty imagining how others feel.
Participants who were shown videos of autistic and non-autistic people talking about emotional events found that people without autism had significantly more difficulty understanding the emotions of people with autism.
The study also found that people experienced more intense emotions in their bodies when they saw videos of autistic people compared to non-autistic people. This feeling was heightened when anger and fear were mentioned.
This has strong implications for social and therapeutic relationships with autistic people, said autism researcher Rachel Cheang of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at Brunel University in London.
"There's always this idea that people with autism don't have empathy. That's usually what you hear, but these findings are quite shocking because they go against the way we usually think about it."
This is the first experimental evidence that, rather than lacking empathy, people with autism simply see the world differently, and that people without autism have just as much trouble understanding their emotions as vice versa. This is called the "dual empathy problem," a theory proposed by Dr. Damian Milton in the early 2010s. Many autistic people have embraced the idea, but until now it had not been scientifically supported.
"It affects how autistic people are perceived," Ms Cheang said. "If they are happy about something and no one notices, people will not share their happiness. And if they are upset about something, it will not be acknowledged that this person can be upset or sad about something. So they will not get support or empathy from others."
Cognitive psychologists measured autistic traits in 81 participants who were asked to rate emotions — happiness, sadness, anger, and fear — in videos of people with varying levels of autism talking about their emotional experiences. In a separate task, they were asked to identify the emotions of people in the videos, rate their intensity, and map them on a body map. All participants were unaware of the diagnosis of the people shown in the videos.
People with autism have a higher risk of suicide than people without autism. Between 11 and 66% of adults with autism have considered suicide in their lifetime, and up to 35% have planned or attempted it, according to 2020 data. Ms Cheang said: "Obviously, I wonder now if part of it is the fact that no one understands them, no one empathizes with them, no one feels what they feel."
"The implications are wide-ranging," said study leader Dr Ignazio Puzzo. "It is important that carers, educators, therapists, doctors, hospital staff and clinicians are aware of these differences and focus on improving understanding or identifying how a person with autism feels to help alleviate their suffering and improve their well-being."