In lesson six, we learned about prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice involves having a negative attitude towards a group, while discrimination is more specifically a behavior that expresses a person’s prejudice. In my life, I have been discriminated against many times on the basis of my Autism, and I believe that that behavior sprung from prejudicial attitudes of people towards Autism. For example, when I was in middle and high school, I was often left out of things and made fun of in a usually explicitly ableist way. I know my Autism had something to do with it because everyone in my small grade knew about my diagnosis.

I think that Social Dominance Theory helps explain some of the behavior of previous middle and high school peers towards me. Because there weren’t really any neuro-divergent people that I knew in my high school, I was left out of most activities, especially outside of school. The aforementioned theory says that people often act in a way that protects whatever social group that they are in. This is relevant because my peers may have seen me as a sort of threat to the hierarchical structure of the group. Further, since people like me who possessed negative social value, which stigmas surrounding Autism fueled, and other traits not considered beneficial for the group, I was ousted from most social activities.

I also think that stereotypes about Autism have aided in encouraging discriminatory behavior towards Autistic people like me in middle and high school. The textbook defines stereotypes as “beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors of members of certain groups.” This is very unfortunate, since stereotypes are often useless to describing people on an individual basis. The same is true for Autism, since it expresses itself differently in different people. Because of the stereotypes, I often have had fears of behaving in a way that would be in accordance with these claimed stereotypes. This is known as a “stereotype threat.”

When I went to college though, things were much better, both in terms of how I viewed myself and how other people view me. I have gained many good friends and have been involved in many social activities since then. I think education has helped some people come over many of the stigmas and prejudices that they may have once had towards Autistic people. In a word, psychology, in its hands, holds the capacity with changeling and helping change society’s attitudes towards Autism, and this starts with understanding why negative attitudes and behavior towards Autistic people occur, some of which was reviewed in Lesson six.