Autistic people don’t lack empathy. We do experience (express) it differently, though. And I think this misconception needs to be cleared up. 

First of all, lack of empathy is NOT a feature of autism. In fact, the word empathy is not mentioned once in the autism section of the DSM. Not a single time in all 22 pages of it.

That said, there’s a ton of research that looked into autism and empathy and a lot of the earlier/older research did find lower empathy in autistic people... but that was before researchers realized that there are different types of empathy.

The main two being cognitive and emotional empathy. 

Cognitive empathy is when a person understands logically what another person is experiencing even when they haven’t experienced it themselves. 

Emotional empathy is when a person has gone through something similar and can relate emotionally to how that person might be feeling who’s going through it now. 

And the most current research on this has consistently shown that autistic people are all over the map when it comes to how they experience empathy. There is no universal autistic experience related to empathy. Except that our version is different from the “normal” or “typical” version of it.

One study published in 2021 looked at empathy in autistic and nonautistic children and not only did they NOT find that the autistic children had less empathy than their nonautistic peers... they found more SIMILARITIES than differences between the two groups. 

(Study for reference... Quantity and Quality of Empathic Responding by Autistic and Non-Autistic Adolescent Girls and Boys... link in comments)

And in another very recent study from 2024, the researchers found that autistic teens reported lower empathy on self assessments than their actual performance... which was THE SAME as their nonautistic peers.

And even more mind blowing (imo) the parents of the autistic teens rated them as less empathetic than the autistic teens rated themselves. 

Which indicates that there can be a significant mismatch between what people THINK they are seeing in autistic people when it comes to empathy, and what the autistic person is ACTUALLY experiencing.

(Study for reference... Empathy Among Autistic and Non-Autistic Adolescents: The Importance of Informant Effects... link in comments)

And then in another study, also from 2024, researchers found that empathy can’t be generalized at all for autistic people. In other words, there is a HUGE amount of variation across autistic individuals in how they experience empathy... and the differences that exist have to do with how the empathy is EXPRESSED, not how it is EXPERIENCED.

(Study for reference... Establishing the Structure and Different Manifestations of Empathy in Autism Spectrum Disorder... link in comments)

To be clear, a very small percentage of autistic people may show a complete lack of empathy... but the research suggests that this is not due to autism itself, and instead is due to co-occurring conditions or other unrelated factors.

So back to my original point... if any statement is made about autism and empathy, it should not be that autistic people lack empathy. It should be that we experience it differently. 

If you’re autistic or the parent of an autistic kiddo, I’d love to know what you think of this post. Does it make sense to you? (I hope it does!)

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