In this project, we will investigate the effect of inter-group bias on spontaneous mentalizing in autistic and non-autistic people. We’re interested in whether we can modulate mentalizing by changing the social environment.

It has long been thought that autism is characterised by difficulties in mentalizing; that is, representing the mental states of others’ to predict and understand behaviour. However, this mentalizing theory has recently been challenged.

It has been well documented that non-autistic people have a propensity to show in-group favouritism during social interactions. This favouritism has been found to extend to mentalizing; non-autistic adults seem to be less likely to attribute minds to out-group members (Hackel et al., 2014). Therefore, it is possible that the mentalizing difficulties that have been observed to date in autistic people are because studies have required participants to represent the mental state of a presumably non-autistic individual. Consequently, in this project we will investigate in-group / out-group (e.g. diagnostic status – autistic vs non-autistic) effects on spontaneous mentalizing in neurotypical and autistic individuals.

Email Sarah at s.white@ucl.ac.uk if you would like to find out more!