This Reaction, Often Considered Innocuous, is a Sign of Autism, According to Researchers

This Reaction, Often Considered Innocuous, is a Sign of Autism, According to Researchers

A new scientific study sheds light on the link between autistic traits and two possible reactions after a "social faux pas."

Feeling "fundamentally bad" after a social misstep rather than simply regretting a specific action: many individuals on the autism spectrum describe this type of emotional experience. A new neuroimaging study, published in the journal Personality Neuroscience, examined the gap between shame and guilt in adults exhibiting more autistic traits. Conducted at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, this research combined psychological questionnaires and resting functional MRI scans in 45 neurotypical young adults, averaging 22 years old. The goal: to understand how the organization of certain brain areas could favor an emotional profile characterized by more shame and less guilt. A pattern that increasingly intrigues researchers.

Autistic Traits, Shame, and Guilt

Scientists clearly distinguish shame from guilt. Shame corresponds to a global and negative self-assessment, the feeling of being a "bad person," with a tendency to withdraw, avoid others, and hide. Guilt, on the other hand, pertains to a specific behavior ("I acted wrongly") and is more often accompanied by a desire to repair, apologize, or change.

Previous studies have shown that autistic individuals, or those who exhibit higher autistic traits than the general population, report, on average, more shame and less guilt. Savio W.H. Wong's team first confirmed this observation: participants with higher scores on the Autism Spectrum Quotient and the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire tended to identify more with shame scenarios and less with guilt scenarios, assessed using the Test of Self-Conscious Affect 3 (TOSCA-3).

What Brain Scans Reveal About Shame and Guilt

Participants underwent a resting functional MRI: lying in the scanner, without a specific task, researchers observed how different brain regions "communicate" spontaneously with each other. They then explored which patterns of functional connectivity were associated with both autistic traits, shame, and guilt.

A particular node emerged: the right frontal pole, located at the front of the brain. The way this region communicated with a set of areas called medial cortical structures seemed to explain, at least in part, why higher autistic traits were associated with more shame and less guilt. These medial structures (including the precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex) play a central role in self-reflection and understanding others' minds. The connectivity between the right frontal pole and the precuneus, in particular, mediates the two links: increased shame and decreased guilt as autistic traits increase. The authors summarize: "These results highlight the role of medial cortical structures as a key neural substrate underlying differences in experiences of negative self-conscious emotions in individuals with high autistic traits," they explain, as quoted by PsyPost.

Autism, Brain, and Emotions

For researchers, these results fit into a broader body of work on the "theory of mind," which is the ability to imagine what another person thinks or feels. When the circuits involved in self-representation and the presumed gaze of others function differently, it becomes more likely to interpret a mistake as proof of a global defect in oneself (shame), rather than as a behavior to correct (guilt). The architecture of the brain may influence how we speak to ourselves internally after a misstep.

However, the authors remain cautious. Their study is cross-sectional and relies on resting measures: it highlights strong links without allowing for claims that these brain networks cause the observed emotional profile. The sample is limited (45 young adults) and consists solely of neurotypical individuals living in Hong Kong, without an autism diagnosis. It is therefore unknown whether the same connectivity patterns are found in diagnosed autistic individuals, at different ages, or in other cultures. They call for further research, including longitudinal studies and work directly involving autistic adults, to clarify the exact role of these networks in shame and guilt.