The Stereotype Content Model and Autism

Today I learned about the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) in the social sciences. According to the SCM, we judge groups along two axes: warmth and competence. People naturally consider their own group to be warm and competent, but we may judge other groups as failing at either one or, worse, both.

We do not trust people we consider to be cold and calculating, or whose behaviors leave us cold. Having this reaction against the cold and calculating sociopath is likely a reasonable survival mechanism. Such people tend to break down social bonds and destroy trust. Someone who is cold toward you doesn’t have your best interests at heart. Anyone whose actions seem selfish, self-centered, or anti-social makes people judge them as cold.

People with mental illnesses or who are otherwise not neurotypical are also typically treated as cold. This is mostly due to the fact that such people behave such that they live in the “uncanny valley” for most people. I think this may be especially true for “high functioning” autistic people such as myself. This coldness comes more from the fact that we leave people cold than from our own coldness itself. At the same time “autism” does mean “self-ism,” and most people think autistic people have no empathy, so in our case, we are also judged as being cold.

Many people don’t trust business leaders because they judge them to be cold and calculating. They are judged (sometimes rightly, often wrongly) to care more about material things (money) than people. Unlike…