Handling of Reputation-Damaging Information in Adolescents and Young Adults With Autism

This study investigated how adolescents and young adults, both with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), handle and disseminate gossip, particularly when it involves norm-violating, reputation-damaging information.

We presented participants with a series of narratives in which a fictional character either adhered to or violated established social norms and asked participants whether they would disclose the newly acquired information.

We found that negative content-especially involving norm transgressions-was 1.5 times more likely to be shared, regardless of neurodevelopmental profile. Surprisingly, participants across both groups-those with ASD and those without-were equally likely to disseminate harmful gossip, challenging assumptions about reduced reputational sensitivity among autistic participants. However, differences emerged in qualitative patterns: participants in the comparison group often preferred peer recipients and cited reputational protection as a reason for withholding gossip, while participants in the autistic sample more frequently shared information with authority figures and did not reference reputational concerns.

These tendencies suggest that individuals in the comparison group may be more motivated by social affiliation, whereas their age-matched autistic counterparts may place greater emphasis on norm enforcement. Overall, our results highlight a communicative hierarchy in which norm-related information takes precedence. Given that the autistic sample had a significantly lower mean IQ than the comparison sample, caution is warranted when generalizing these findings to the broader population of autistic adolescents and young adults.