New study finds online self-reports may not accurately reflect clinical autism diagnoses. Adults who report high levels of autistic traits through online surveys may not reflect the same social behaviors or clinical profiles as those who have been formally diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-online-self-reports-may-not-accurately-reflect-clinical-autism-diagnoses/

[u/SenorSplashdamage]

The entire “wow, self assessments aren’t a diagnosis” snark above feels like part of a bigger problem in people’s thinking when there’s an overall contempt and underestimation of the intelligence of others. It shows up a lot in faulty thinking online where people react to headlines or news from the position that everyone else is stupid and will come to the stupidest conclusion possible.

There’s even an academic theory on it called Third-person Effect where it examines this gap people have for how gullible they believe the crowd is vs how savvy they see themselves as. The wider that gap, the more socially negative behavior emerges and, unsurprisingly, the more wrong the person usually is.

[u/Monday0987 → u/SenorSplashdamage]

Self assessment could be skewed by what results outcome the person wants to see. There is emotion involved not just intelligence.

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/Monday0987]

The point is more the underestimation of others being more likely to misinterpret and misuse a tool than we ourselves would be, whether that’s raw intelligence or something like thinking others have more issues with emotions clouding judgment.

[u/thefirelink → u/SenorSplashdamage]

It's widely known that people self report inaccurately. If you want to self diagnose, go for it, but I've seen people self diagnose then seek out therapist after therapist after therapist in order to find one that will validate their self diagnosis.

It's a good thing to do if your goal is to gauge if you should seek a more professional opinion, imo, but that's about it.

[u/draggingonfeetofclay → u/SenorSplashdamage]

A lot of those views are imo also coincidentally formed by the environment people live and work in.

I had a boss at a supermarket who had a low opinion of other people. He constantly had a lot of negative experiences with stupid customers. Most intelligent customers never make trouble and remain polite, so he'd forget them and it wouldn't stress him. But the negative experiences stuck.

I feel like a lot of people just happen to form these impressions because a lot of the time, people interact daily with other people where they are in charge and know everything about the topic, while their customers/supplicants/students don't and as a consequence, many people form the impression that the rest of the world is stupid.

[u/SenorSplashdamage → u/draggingonfeetofclay]

I’m sure there are environments that make people prone to confirmation bias worse.

[u/draggingonfeetofclay → u/SenorSplashdamage]

I know not everyone is like that in an environment like that, but I've seen it happen. Guys like him live hand to mouth and paycheck to paycheck and they give you confused stares when you start with intellectual topics or statistics and stuff like that.

I know there's a way to explain his confirmation bias to him, but it's hard and I don't work there anymore.