I’ve read that people with autism anthropomorphize far less than other people, because their “model other people based on myself” module doesn’t seem to be working normally (or so my crude impression goes).
The gap between autistic humans and neurotypical humans may be bigger than the gap between male and female humans. I would list autism as an exception to the psychological unity of humankind.
Not really an exception since autistic people can still sexually reproduce with neurotypical humans, and especially since there’s a whole spectrum with varying degrees and even different symptoms not always showing up; autistic people don’t have any unique complex machinery and not even any missing complex machinery, at least not in terms of the entire machinery missing.
As a mildly autistic person I really wish I could make some comment from personal experience on anthropomorphism, but… I suppose the problem is that I only have the experiences of an autistic person to compare my experiences to, so I can’t say much in relative terms, and haven’t very strongly noticed trends among neurotypical people to be different.
Personally I think I actually tend to anthropomorphize more as a result of my ability to guess what others are thinking being learned rather than instinctive. Because I really am using the same circuitry for comprehending people as I do for comprehending car engines and computers and using it in essentially the same way.
But I may not be typical. Best guess is that my particular quirks are mostly the result of a childhood head injury rather than anything genetic.
I’ve read that people with autism anthropomorphize far less than other people, because their “model other people based on myself” module doesn’t seem to be working normally (or so my crude impression goes).
The gap between autistic humans and neurotypical humans may be bigger than the gap between male and female humans. I would list autism as an exception to the psychological unity of humankind.
Not really an exception since autistic people can still sexually reproduce with neurotypical humans, and especially since there’s a whole spectrum with varying degrees and even different symptoms not always showing up; autistic people don’t have any unique complex machinery and not even any missing complex machinery, at least not in terms of the entire machinery missing. As a mildly autistic person I really wish I could make some comment from personal experience on anthropomorphism, but… I suppose the problem is that I only have the experiences of an autistic person to compare my experiences to, so I can’t say much in relative terms, and haven’t very strongly noticed trends among neurotypical people to be different.
Personally I think I actually tend to anthropomorphize more as a result of my ability to guess what others are thinking being learned rather than instinctive. Because I really am using the same circuitry for comprehending people as I do for comprehending car engines and computers and using it in essentially the same way.
But I may not be typical. Best guess is that my particular quirks are mostly the result of a childhood head injury rather than anything genetic.