What we know and do not know about camouflaging, impression management, and mental health and wellbeing in autistic people

Added on 27/12/2024

Type de contenu

Journal article of the type Commentary ( ; english)

Valeria Khudiakova , Mishel Alexandrovsky * , Wei Ai , Meng-Chuan Lai
What we know and do not know about camouflaging, impression management, and mental health and wellbeing in autistic people published in the journal "Autism research" Preprint, 8 pages , doi: 10.1002/aur.3299

*One co-author has publicly identified as autistic. [Learn more about this mention]

- 3% of authors cited in the bibliography of this resource have publicly identified as autistic (5 out of 158 authors).
- 6% of references cited in this resource contain at least one author who has publicly identified as autistic (4 out of 62 references).

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Summary/Presentation

Camouflaging is an impression management strategy employed by some autistic people, widely seen as a response to the pervasive stigma surrounding autism in society. Autistic narratives and lived experiences consistently link camouflaging to anxiety, depression, suicide risks, and autistic burnout. Quantitative research is yet to determine the nature of these relationships, with a significant portion of recent studies providing inconsistent evidence. While camouflaging can be a compelled survival strategy in social environments, it might also contribute to positive outcomes such as securing employment and forming positive social relationships, implicating a complex interrelationship with mental health and wellbeing. We advocate for using a transactional impression management framework to understand camouflaging and wellbeing and address the inconsistencies in research. Through examining the transactions among a person's individual and cognitive characteristics, behavior modification strategies, and the particular social contexts they find themselves in, this framework guides new empirical research directions to delineate the relationships between camouflaging, impression management, mental health, and wellbeing. There is a need to develop multiple measures of camouflaging that delineate the motivations, ability, effortfulness, and perceived effectiveness of camouflaging and examine how a person's social behaviors are perceived in different social environments. Research should also focus on intersectionality, sociocultural influences, and diverse autistic voices to study context-sensitive camouflaging experiences across the autistic population.

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(1) References in blue are resources listed on our site.

(2) Authors listed in this bibliography whose names are in color have published other resources referenced on the site. Clicking on the name allows you to see the list of resources they have published and shared on the site.

(3) Authors whose names are followed by an asterisk have publicly disclosed being autistic.

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