A new study shows that the ability to distinguish truth from lies is diminished in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) – putting them at greater risk of being manipulated.
Researchers, led by Professor David Williams of the University of Kent, found that lie detection ability is ‘significantly diminished’ in those with a full ASD diagnosis. It is also related to how many ASD traits people in the general population have – the more traits, the poorer the deception detection ability.
I WONDER IF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT COMMON AUTISTIC TRAITS (LIKE, HMM, NOT MAKING EYE CONTACT) ARE FREQUENTLY CONFLATED WITH HALLMARKS OF LYING
Maybe not.. the argument isn’t that autistics are often accused of lying because we accidentally give off “tells” that allistic people think signify lying, it’s that we can’t tell who’s lying.
Which, firstly, allistics are bad at this too, and the more confident they are that they can tell truth from lies, the more likely they will be hoodwinked. Secondly, yeah, we can be easily manipulated because we can’t accurately detect other people’s emotions, which means blatant lying that any allistic could catch will slip by us. But, on the same token, we are less likely to accept that X is true because our tribe says it is, which means we are less susceptible to believing lies that all our friends believe just because our friends believe it. So the lies that most often catch allistics are less likely to affect us. We’re also less likely to be influenced by emotional signals associated with charisma that can convince allistic people “this is a person I should trust and listen to” when that person is lying, because we can’t read those emotional signals.
I don’t think they tested for this kind of thing.
People with Autism Spectrum Disorder risk being manipulated because they can’t tell when they’re being lied to
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