Autistic people often struggle with decision-making, and I want to talk about why... because discovering the research behind this blew my mind.

According to a study (link on screen) autistic people often struggle with decision-making because we tend to collect and analyze all relevant information in an exhaustive decision-making process in order to identify what we consider to be the best possible outcome.

This blew my mind because it perfectly explains what's going on in my head every time I'm struggling to make a decision. But it gets even more interesting...

The research showed that people who approach decision-making in this way... ultimately make better decisions, objectively speaking... BUT are often less satisfied with the outcomes of their decisions.

So, if we're prone to this type of decision making, the chances that we'll end up unsatisfied are higher... which, if you think about it, probably makes it even HARDER for us to make decisions because we want to avoid repeating our "mistakes." 😅

But here's the part I found most interesting... according to the research, autistic people often go through this exhaustive analytical process when making decisions, mainly because we fear failure. 

(The researchers did look at other reasons for why autistic people do this, but ultimately found fear of failure to be the main one.)

Thinking about this through my own lens as someone who also struggles with perfectionism... all of this makes perfect sense.

And by the way, research has also found that autistic people are more likely to struggle with perfectionism. Let me know if you'd be interested in me talking about that.

But back to autism and decision making... if you're autistic, does this resonate with you as much as it resonated with me?

And if you like this type of content, follow for more...