We are attempting to replicate a prior study examining social perceptions of autistic individuals and the subsequent affective, behavioral, and cognitive responses. We are extending the replication to examine empathy and religiosity/spirituality as these relate to interactions with persons with autism. We predict that participants will behave, think, and feel more positively towards a person with autism/autistic traits when they are familiar with the condition and when they know the person has autism. We also predict that religiosity and empathy will correlate positively with positive affect, behavior, and cognition towards someone with autistic traits.
This study uses an online survey in which partipants are randomly assigned to read one of two conditions where they interacted with a new neighbor: 1) participants were told the person with whom they were interacting was on the Autism spectrum or 2) participants were not told the person was on the Autism spectrum.
We used the following measures to test our other hypotheses: Centrality of Religiosity Scale (Huber & Huber, 2012), : Intrinsic Spirituality Scale (Hodge, 2003), The 10-item Autism-Spectrum Quotient (Allison et al., 2012), The Empathy Components Questionnaire (Batchelder et al., 2017), Short Schwartz’s Values Survey (Lindeman, M. & Verkasalo, 2005). Materials are uploaded, excluding consent form and debriefing statement.
THe complete survey and scenario materials are located in a document called "OSF registration for Beliefs and Perceptions replication"