Interpersonal similarity of autistic traits predicts friendship quality

Abstract

Autistic traits are known to be associated with social interaction difficulties. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, relevant research has been typically restricted to studying individuals. In line with the ‘dialectical misattunement hypothesis’ and clinical insights of intact social interactions amongst autistic individuals, we hypothesized that friendship quality varies as a function of interpersonal similarity and more concretely the difference value of autistic traits in a dyad, above and beyond autistic traits per se. Therefore, in this study, we used self-report questionnaires to investigate these measures in a sample of 67 neurotypical dyads across a broad range of autistic traits. Our results demonstrate that the more similar two persons are in autistic traits, the higher is the perceived quality of their friendship, irrespective of friendship duration, age, sex and importantly, the (average of) autistic traits in a given dyad. More specifically, higher interpersonal similarity of autistic traits was associated with higher measures of closeness, acceptance and help. These results, therefore, lend support to the idea of an interactive turn in the study of social abilities across the autism spectrum and pave the way for future studies on the multiscale dynamics of social interactions.

Editorial: Social Interaction in Neuropsychiatry

“…Such an account will help to explain how social interactions—or their absence—can constitute a risk factor for the development of psychiatric disorders, and how helping patients to increase their social interaction skills may turn out to be a helpful transdiagnostic approach that promotes resilience and positively affects mental health. Finally, taking social interaction seriously may help to investigate how similarities across interaction partners affect quality of life ( 5 ) and lead to the refinement of patient-oriented approaches that are based on a deeper understanding of how interpersonal dissimilarities and mismatch in social interaction affect well-being. This could then be described as an inter-personalized, rather than a personalized psychiatry.…”

“They Think I’m Amazing but Won’t Talk with Me.” Neurotypical People Are More Cognitively Than Behaviorally Positive Towards Their Autistic Friends

“…Another, alternate explanation is that autism knowledge does not necessarily mediate positive attitudes (McManus et al, 2011;White et al, 2016). Instead, acceptance is predicted by the quality of an individual's contact (Allport, 1954;May, 2012;Bolis et al, 2020). Bolis et al (2020) recently showed that interpersonal similarity-specifically, the between-persons quality of autistic traits-is directly related to the quality of friendships held by autistic people.…”

“…Instead, acceptance is predicted by the quality of an individual's contact (Allport, 1954;May, 2012;Bolis et al, 2020). Bolis et al (2020) recently showed that interpersonal similarity-specifically, the between-persons quality of autistic traits-is directly related to the quality of friendships held by autistic people. Thus, it may be that cognitive similarity is related to one's ability to integrate others within one's own selfstructure (Aron et al, 2004;Smith, 1999).…”

Being ‘in sync’—is interactional synchrony the key to understanding the social brain?

“…The present collection of articles covers a wide range of synchronizing situations. Some of these situations are very typical of everyday life, including interactions we have with household pets ( Axelsson and Fawcett, this issue ), friends ( Bolis et al , this issue ) or family members ( Nguyen et al , this issue ), whereas others are more exceptional like a joint musical performance of trained musicians ( Zamm et al , this issue ). What these situations reveal is that synchrony depends on whether individuals have a special connection or bond.…”

“…For example, synchrony is more readily observed when children interact with their parents as compared to unfamiliar adults ( Reindl et al , 2018 ), when women solve a problem together with other women as compared to men ( Thorson and West, 2018 ) or when two unfamiliar individuals find each other attractive and are interested in a date ( Chang et al , this issue ). Another factor influencing interpersonal synchrony may be personality similarities and differences between interaction partners ( Bolis et al , this issue ).…”