Moral reasoning about everyday situations in adults with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Little work has explored moral reasoning in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present research used two novel scenario-based tasks to investigate how adults with and without ASD reason about moral rules and apply them in everyday interactions. The Rule Transgressions task examined decision-making in situations where breaking a rule might lead to a personal advantage. People with ASD did not differ from control participants in how frequently they chose to carry out the transgressions or their ratings of acceptability. However, they gave fewer sophisticated rationales to explain why the transgressions were wrong. The Social Intentionality task examined how participants judged and reacted to intentional and accidental transgressions performed by a story character. Both groups judged and responded more harshly to intentional transgressions than unintentional ones, but participants with ASD gave harsher responses overall. The findings suggest some preservation of the understanding of moral rules in ASD, but difficulties in applying and reasoning about these.