“It’s how we get by in a world that doesn’t make sense to us”: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of autistic adults’ views about kindness

According to the traditional medical model, “social deficits” are hallmark characteristics of autism. Some have suggested that this necessarily limits autistic people’s kindness. However, recent research suggests that those closest to autistic people often say that kindness is among their most distinctive traits. We interviewed ten autistic adults to seek their views on relationships between autism and kindness and ask them why others might think that autistic people are distinctively kind. Qualitative analysis suggested that there are multiple possible conceptualisations of kindness; that autistic people are often highly concerned about others’ experiences and preferences; that autistic people often use internalised rules of ‘appropriately kind behaviour’ to try to avoid ‘doing the wrong thing’ when reacting to their kind feelings and inclinations; and that autistic people often find implementing kindness most straightforward and rewarding when directed towards others who have apparently clear needs and routes to effective help-giving, e.g., close relatives, other autistic people, or loved animals or objects. Finally, participants also noted that others were sometimes distressingly unkind to autistic people, which could further complicate autistic people’s own kindness. Our findings potentially offer improved ways of understanding kindness and the ways that it can manifest.