Empathy is often thought of as a universal human trait, yet it is also one of the most debated aspects of autism.
While stereotypes suggest that autistic people struggle with empathy, many in the community challenge this idea, pointing to experiences of deep sensitivity and care. A new study brings fresh insight into the debate by asking autistic people themselves how they view their own capacity for empathy.
The research, led by Sophie Campbell-Templeton, Peter Branney, and Peter Mitchell, was published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology (2025). It is one of the first studies to place autistic voices at the center of the question, rather than relying solely on experimental tasks or the perspectives of relatives.
The study’s main finding is that autistic participants rated themselves lower on empathy than non-autistic participants, but their explanations revealed a more nuanced picture.
Both groups described abilities in cognitive empathy, the capacity to recognize another’s thoughts and feelings, and affective empathy, the capacity to share those feelings.
The autistic group’s responses showed that while some struggled with identifying subtle emotions, many reported strong experiences of affective empathy—sometimes to the point of feeling overwhelmed by others’ emotions.
Empathy has been a contested topic in autism research for decades.
Traditionally, it has been broken down into two parts: cognitive empathy, or understanding what someone else is feeling, and affective empathy, or sharing those feelings.
Earlier studies suggested that autistic people may have more difficulty with cognitive empathy while showing intact or even heightened affective empathy. More recently, some research has pointed to the possibility of “hyper-empathy” in autism.
Against this backdrop, the new study aimed to explore how autistic people perceive themselves, recognizing that lived experience is a critical piece of the discussion.
The study recruited 100 participants, evenly divided between autistic and non-autistic groups, with equal numbers of men and women.
Participants were asked to complete ten “I am …” statements to describe themselves and then rate their own empathy on a scale from 0 to 10, providing explanations for their scores.
This design allowed the researchers to compare self-concepts across groups and to capture the reasoning behind empathy self-ratings.
The analysis found that non-autistic participants were more likely to describe themselves as happy, friendly, and caring, while autistic participants were more likely to identify directly with being autistic.
However, both groups used similar language when describing traits such as intelligence, creativity, or resilience.
When it came to empathy, autistic participants gave lower average ratings (around 6 out of 10 compared to 8 out of 10 in the non-autistic group).
Yet their written justifications showed similarities to non-autistic participants in recognizing and sharing others’ emotions, suggesting that the lower scores may reflect perceptions shaped by societal stereotypes as much as personal experience.
The qualitative data revealed four major themes.
Both autistic and non-autistic participants described being able to recognize others’ feelings, although autistic participants more often noted difficulties when emotions were subtle.
Many from both groups reported strong affective empathy, saying they could feel others’ sadness or distress as if it were their own.
Autistic participants in particular described empathy as a skill they had worked to develop over time, suggesting it can be learned rather than innate.
Finally, while both groups expressed a desire to help others, autistic participants more frequently reported uncertainty about how to respond in socially expected ways.
These findings matter because they challenge the simplistic notion that autistic people lack empathy.
Instead, they point to a more complex reality in which empathy may be experienced differently and sometimes underestimated—by both autistic individuals themselves and by the wider society.
The authors note that internalized stigma and stereotypes could play a role in why autistic participants rated themselves lower, even when their descriptions showed empathy in practice.
This echoes the “Double Empathy Problem,” a theory that misunderstandings between autistic and non-autistic people are mutual rather than one-sided.
For the public, the takeaway is that assumptions about empathy in autism should be reconsidered.
Autistic people may approach empathy differently, but this does not equate to an absence of care or concern for others.
Recognizing these nuances can reduce stigma and promote more accurate understandings of autistic experiences, with potential benefits for mental health and identity development in the community.
The authors acknowledge some limitations. The study did not collect detailed demographic data, such as socioeconomic background, and the broad definition of empathy provided to participants may have influenced responses.
Still, the research highlights the importance of including autistic voices directly in psychological studies, offering insights that laboratory tests alone cannot capture.
By focusing on self-perceptions, this study contributes to a growing body of work that moves beyond deficit-based models of autism.
It suggests that the conversation about empathy should not be framed in terms of what autistic people “lack,” but in terms of how empathy is experienced, expressed, and understood across different groups.
Citation
Campbell-Templeton, S., Branney, P., & Mitchell, P. How do autistic people view their empathic capacity? British Journal of Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.70009
