Preserved self-other integration during social decision making among individuals with elevated autistic traits

Authors

Lin, Y., Pellicano, E., Dickson, C., Trudel, N., Noonan, M., Lockwood, P., Luo, Y.-j., Fleming, S. M., Wittmann, M. K.

Abstract

Autistic people can find social interactions difficult to navigate, traditionally attributed to difficulties in taking others' perspectives. However, we have a limited understanding of how autistic people integrate self and other information efficiently during social decision-making. We conducted four highly powered experiments (total N = 1,621) to determine whether autistic traits affect two aspects of self-other integration during social decision making: self-bias and social basis function use. Using Bayesian analyses, we found strong support for the absence of a relationship between autistic traits and either aspect of social decision making, even after controlling for potential confounds (BF01 = 32.13 for self-bias, BF01 = 7.04 for social basis function use). Our results indicate that variations along autistic traits do not impact how people prioritise self-relevant information (self-bias) or utilize compressed social patterns of interaction (social basis function use) to guide their decisions about oneself and other people. These findings nuance the conceptualisation of social-cognitive processes across autistic traits while highlighting the need for large samples to validate null effects.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 10 Jun 2026.

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