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Are autistic people nice people?

soboiceland

I’m curious about how autistic people are perceived socially, particularly around ideas like “niceness” and friendliness, which can be quite subjective and culturally defined.

From your own experiences, how do you interpret or experience interactions with autistic people? Do you think differences in communication style affect how autistic people are perceived as “nice” or not?

For those who have autistic friends (or are autistic themselves), what do you value in those friendships? What do you think autistic people often bring to relationships that might be overlooked or misunderstood?

I don't believe I've had autistic friends and don't seek autistic people out as potential friends so I'm curious to know whether other people are the similar.

Parents

  • It depends how you interpret "nice" in terms of a person.

    The Cambridge dictionary defines it as "kind, friendly or polite".

    I don't have any friends in real life who I know have a formal diagnosis of autism, but the two I am closest to have both scored fairly high on the AQ50 and I believe are both on the spectrum. Plus I read posts on here by autistic people and I think I get an idea from that what they're like.

    So I would say that the people on the spectrum that I have observed are:

    Polite, unless stressed and undergoing a meltdown or shutdown.

    Friendly, unless they are struggling with communication (they have often been bullied or rejected at some point, and so understand how important it is to try to make others feel comfortable)

    Kind - there seems to be a lot of emotional empathy and concern for the wellbeing of others in my experience.

    Of course, sometimes these qualities will not be seen by others. One time when I was working, I walked into a room where two colleagues were talking about someone, and one of them was describing the person as kind. When I asked who they were talking about, I was quite surprised when the answer was "you".

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  • It depends how you interpret "nice" in terms of a person.

    The Cambridge dictionary defines it as "kind, friendly or polite".

    I don't have any friends in real life who I know have a formal diagnosis of autism, but the two I am closest to have both scored fairly high on the AQ50 and I believe are both on the spectrum. Plus I read posts on here by autistic people and I think I get an idea from that what they're like.

    So I would say that the people on the spectrum that I have observed are:

    Polite, unless stressed and undergoing a meltdown or shutdown.

    Friendly, unless they are struggling with communication (they have often been bullied or rejected at some point, and so understand how important it is to try to make others feel comfortable)

    Kind - there seems to be a lot of emotional empathy and concern for the wellbeing of others in my experience.

    Of course, sometimes these qualities will not be seen by others. One time when I was working, I walked into a room where two colleagues were talking about someone, and one of them was describing the person as kind. When I asked who they were talking about, I was quite surprised when the answer was "you".

Children