Non-Clinical Autistic Traits Correlate With Social and Ethical but Not With Financial and Recreational Risk-Taking.

Kristel De Groot

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00360

Abstract

Previous research into uncertain and risky decision-making in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been inconclusive, with some studies reporting less uncertain and risky decisions by persons with ASD compared to neurotypicals, but other studies failing to find such effects. A possible explanation for these inconsistent findings is that aberrant decision-making in ASD is domain-specific, and only manifests itself in domains related to autism symptomatology. The present study examines this premise by correlating self-reported autistic traits to individuals’ intention to engage in risky behaviours, their perception of how risky these behaviours are, and the amount of benefit they expect to obtain from engaging in them; all for five separate domains of decision-making: social, ethical, recreational, health/safety, and financial. In line with the hypotheses, persons with higher autistic traits reported reduced intention to engage in risky social behaviours and increased intention to engage in risky ethical behaviours. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between autistic traits and risk perception in the social domain, indicating that persons with higher autistic traits perceive social behaviours as riskier than do persons with lower autistic traits. Correlations between autistic traits and individuals’ intention to engage in risky recreational and financial behaviours were small, and supported the null hypothesis (as shown by Bayes Factors). Given that most studies on uncertain and risky decision-making take place in a financial context, the present results could explain previous inconsistent findings on decision-making in ASD. Therefore, future studies should also examine decision-making outside the financial realm.

Highlights

Decision-making is a key process that can have major consequences for personal and professional life
Six participants scored ≥1 SD below the mean. Inspection of their data did not reveal any signs of Insufficient Effort Responding (IER): none had odd response patterns, and their average scores on the 19 study variables only significantly differed from those of the other participants once
The present study examined the correlations between autistic traits and individuals’ intention of engaging in risky behaviours, their perception of how risky these behaviours are, and the amount of benefit they expect to obtain from engaging in these behaviours

Summary

Introduction

Decision-making is a key process that can have major consequences for personal and professional life. One such group concerns individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental syndrome characterised by difficulties in social communication, restricted and repetitive behaviour, a preference for sameness and routines, and sensory abnormalities (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Many situations are characterised by risk (where we know the probabilities associated with the outcomes) or uncertainty (where these probabilities are unknown) (Knight, 1921). Research into such uncertain or risky decision-making in ASD has so far been inconclusive. Some studies show that individuals with ASD make less uncertain and/or risky decisions (De Martino et al, 2008; South et al, 2014; Levin et al, 2015), whereas others fail to find such differences between individuals with and without ASD (Johnson et al, 2006; South et al, 2008, 2011)

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Conclusion