SIMILAR AUTISTIC TRAITS MEANT MORE ATTRACTION, STUDY FOUND
People with similar autistic traits liked each other more when their opinions matched during group conversation, a brain-scanning study found.
The findings were released on September 10, 2025, by a team associated with Tianjin Normal University in Tianjin, China. Xuejun Bai and Peng Zhang were named as lead and co-lead investigators, and the paper ran in Biological Psychiatry, News-Medical reported.
“Our data suggest that successful communication depends on the match between partners—both in trait profile and in shared conversational ground—not solely on individual skill,” Bai said.
The paper is titled “Attraction Through Similarity in Autistic Traits: A Group Communication Study Using Social Relations Model and fNIRS Hyperscanning.”
How the experiment worked
The team built 30 four-person groups. Each one had two people high in autistic traits and two low in autistic traits.
Researchers used the Social Relations Model to measure how much participants liked and felt attracted to the others in their group. They also tracked cortical activity with functional near-infrared spectroscopy, known as fNIRS.
The readings were taken in two settings: passive story listening and an active, turn-taking discussion.
What the scans showed
Participants with similar levels of autistic traits reported more attraction to one another when their opinions lined up in the discussion.
Brain-to-brain synchronization shifted with both trait similarity and the social setting. Pairs low in autistic traits showed more synchronization during passive listening, according to the EurekAlert release.
During the active discussion, pairs with low and high autistic traits used different brain networks.
The researchers framed the results through the Double Empathy Problem. It treats autistic communication difficulties as something that can arise between two people, rather than solely from an autistic person’s empathy deficit.
They also pointed to the Dialectical Misattunement Hypothesis, which proposes that interactions between people with similar autistic traits may run more smoothly and show up in neural synchronization.
“By situating autism research within the Double Empathy and DMH frameworks, we move beyond deficit language and show that individuals with higher autistic traits may engage different—not simply weaker—neural coordination strategies during real communication,” Bai said.
Zhang explained why the team went with a group setting. “We believed that studying naturalistic, group-based communication—rather than only structured or one-to-one laboratory tasks—could reveal how neurological alignment (or misalignment) emerges in real conversations,” Zhang said.
The paper’s abstract, listed on Colab.ws, described earlier evidence as inconsistent. It said studies of pairs and unstructured tasks had methodological limits.
What the journal editor and researchers said
“This research shifts our approach to (mis)communication in individuals with ASD,” said John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry.
Krystal said the finding that people who are neurally “in sync” find social connection easier suggests a possible approach to building connection among people with ASD.
Bai said the findings support adapting environments rather than focusing only on training individuals.
The researchers suggested that adapting environments could reduce social fatigue and support meaningful connections for autistic people. That is a proposed implication, not something the study measured.
The researchers said structuring discussions, making turn-taking clear and aligning expectations may promote social and neural attunement.
