Autistic People Are Believed to Feel More Pain than Non-Autistic People

Abstract

Members of some marginalized groups are erroneously considered relatively insensitive to pain, an assumption that seems to reflect beliefs that they have been toughened up by the hardship they have endured. Autistic people represent a marginalized group, and some clinical accounts erroneously suggest that they, too, are relatively insensitive to pain. In two pre-registered studies involving college students and Prolific workers in the United States ( N = 287), we found that both autistic and non-autistic participants believed that an autistic target had experienced more hardship than a non-autistic target and (unexpectedly) would feel more pain than the non-autistic target or themselves. We speculate that our findings may reflect that autistic people are infantilized, viewed as vulnerable, and as lacking the agency to toughen up from life hardship.