TikTok Autism and its relation to Psychology

TikTok has a lot of videos about ASD and also other Psychology ideas such as "avoidant attachment". Many of the things described as specific to ASD are also universal behaviours and traits. Here's a few of them.

To caveat: I have an ASD diagnosis so I've got knowledge about the traits in the list below. They're definitely very relatable but they're not exclusive to autism nor define it as a diagnosis. I have "level 1" ASD which is what the TikTok videos are about.

Relevant paper: The Reach and Accuracy of Information on Autism on TikTok.

In 1963, Erving Goffman's book "Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity" talked about your diagnosis becoming part of your identity, the "discredited" hiding their identity or alternatively it being revealed and then you are discredited - similar in ways to masking in ASD. Thomas Scheff (1974) advocated for Labelling Theory and talked about a mentally ill person having to fulfil their role as the mentally ill persona in society, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fulfilling a role seems similar, minus the obviously negative "mentally-ill" label, to ASD and ADHD in 2025. TikTok and other social media present ASD as a number of "quirky" traits and see this is as fulfilling the role of an ASD person in society. 'How does psychiatric diagnosis affect young people’s self-concept and social identity? (O’Connor, C. et al., 2018, pp. 94–119.) discusses how ASD and ADHD diagnoses are less stigmatising.

Openness and honesty

ASD people are portrayed as brutally honest, which is true at a younger age - you are (before you realise you're doing it, then it's watered down). Alongside this is the notion of ASD people are open to new things, new experiences.

But what the ASD TikToks don't mention is the openness they describe is often the "O" in the OCEAN (NEO-PI) personality model, which is often unrelated ASD. Are all people with ASD high in openness? The OCEAN traits themselves are inherited to some extent.

Personality traits are far from perfect predictors of ASD vs. NT group membership

Working memory & Forgetfulness

Working memory was a term coined in the 1960s to describe a memory system for holding and manipulating information during complex cognitive tasks. Short term memory might hold a phone number (5-9 digits, Miller's (1956) magic number), working memory holds the numbers as you re-arrange them or perform sums on them.

Baddeley, A.D., & Hitch, G. (1974) made it an influential term in their Working Memory paper.

A Meta-Analysis of Working Memory Impairments in Autism Spectrum Disorders (pay wall).

Forgetting where you put your keys, or finding yourself forgetting why you're in a room is something you might find occurring a lot with ADHD and ASD (the ADHD part of it). This differs from "forgetfulness" which is long term memory and encoding.

Working memory and attention problems will lead to misplacing items. However forgetting where you put your keys can be from many other factors including fatigue, stress, high cognitive load, anxiety, trauma, medication.

But you can learn to manage it with ASD - TODO lists, putting systems in place to help yourself as with other ASD problems like Dyspraxia.

Stimming

Stimming comes in many forms in ASD, I can find myself employing it in stressful situations (especially social ones) and I have memories as a child of meltdowns followed by rocking.

Displacement behaviours emerge in stressful situations defines displacement behaviours (stimming) in non-human primates, e.g. hair stroking. It's a behaviour humans and non-humans deploy for stress, for example foot twirling and foot tapping.

Stimming in ASD is clearly related, used to regulate. But the type, function and quantity is what differentiates ASD - for example hand flapping, emotional regulation via a stim.

What you find on TikTok are behaviours such as nail picking, nail biting, even ice eating being describe but these are essentially displacement behaviours or just preferences, not necessarily ASD-specific.

Restricted and repetitive behaviors in autism spectrum disorders: a review of research in the last decade goes into detail, and also evidence-based behavioral interventions for repetitive behaviors in autism

Defiance

In ASD TikTok you will hear a lot about Pathological Demand Avoidance. There are similar observed phenomena in Psychology (this is not to diminish PDA, if you experience it, it is definitely a distinct set of reactions).

Autism behaviours can look like Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), but ODD lists vindictiveness.

In Social Psychology there is also Reactance Theory, Brehm (1966), when people perceive their freedom as being threatened or eliminated, they experience reactance and are motivated to restore their freedom. Also the Backfire effect, although this is more recent and is about having beliefs contradicted and doubling down on the beliefs. And this one has failed to replicate - DOIs 10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2 and 10.1007/s11109-018-9443-y

Being alone

ASD TikTok does its best to reinforce this as the ASD experience. What it misses it a cross over with other research and also social psychology research as well.

Schizoid personality disorder and Schizotypal Personality Disorder are schizophrenia spectrum traits. This paper discusses the overlap of autistic and schizotypal traits .

Isolation and loneliness and slightly different concepts in Psychology, with loneliness being the quality of your relationships with others - for example the idea of being lonely even if you're famous. You can be isolated as a product of your environment as well, "Propinquity" is the social psychology term which describes the proximity to people both in distance but also similarity of values etc, which plays an important role in friendship numbers.

Trauma

Trauma can be described as an existential crisis that threatens your understanding of yourself and the world you live in. And the reality and truth once believed in are erased.

With ASD you're very likely to be bullied at some point, and there's lots of evidence linking bullying to trauma. Cathy Caruth described trauma as "a wound of the mind", and an area exists known as trauma studies. It was also first described by Freud and refers to how you respond to a stressful event - the intensity of the response not the event, if the intensity of your response causes difficulties.

But wound is the important part, it's something that doesn't heal without help, with PTSD being best known.

Whether you have previously experienced trauma is a big risk factor for future trauma & mental health problems, and with ASD you experience a lot of "small t" traumas. But not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop problematic reactions.

On TikTok, I've seen trauma reactions conflated with ASD in a few videos. It's understandable given the life experience of ASD but being hyper-vigilant, for example, is not necessarily part of ASD.

Bonus: attachment theory and "anxious avoidants"

This is not ASD related but something you find on ASD TikTok - the "anxious avoidant" is the new demon. Everyone's ex's are anxious avoidants. Attachment styles have been shown to only last 15 years after being formed and can also be changed, with the right person, at anytime.

There is evidence that Adverse Childhood Events - ACE scores are bidirectional with attachment styles. This paper is about adult attachment styles and ACE scores.