That’s not exclusive to autism. It’s common in all people
That’s not this situation.
Why not? What’s the difference in your eyes?
Because it’s a tiny study (underpowered), with major methodological problems. The study shows essentially nothing, and yet many people in this comments page are acting like it’s now a proven fact that this is a trait of autism. And even the paper itself says this trait isn’t necessarily any more common in autistic people than in the general population.
Iirc, the point of the paper was that autistic people tend to do it more than non-autistic people, and on a broader scale.
Interestingly, one thing it pointed out was that people with autism tend to focus on the “non-human in online roleplaying and games” which is something I’ve (unsurprisingly) seen a lot.
But they’re studying autistic people.
That’s like saying “study shows autistic people need to drink water to survive”. But all people need to drink water to survive, so it’s a meaningless statement to limit it to autistic people. It has no informative point.
This is a very poor take, and it is clear you didn’t even read the abstract before deciding the study is pointless. There is an obvious value in determing not just what traits are shared between autistic individuals and neurotypical individuals, but also determining the degree and intensity.
To use your example, what if the study on drinking water showed they needed less water than an average person? Could that not be valuable, and lead to further research?
This study identified an anomaly. Autistic people have trouble identifying with emotions in other people, but for some reason seem to have no problems doing so for objects. Isn’t that strange? Doesn’t that beg the further question of why? Great revelations in research are built on tiny stones like this.
So it doesn’t feel sad; https://gwern.net/doc/psychiatry/autism/2018-white-2.pdf
Or
Hatred of manipulation in autism: How to ensure autists will flat out refuse to interact with you or your content
¯\(ツ)/¯
I dont even personify people. Headline made me laugh though
