Neurodivergent glossary
Double Empathy Problem
The idea that communication breakdowns between autistic and non-autistic people go both ways—it's a mutual gap in understanding, not a one-sided autistic deficit.
What it means
The double empathy problem, proposed by Dr. Damian Milton in 2012, challenges one of the most persistent assumptions about autism: that autistic people lack empathy or social understanding. Milton's argument is simple but revolutionary—when two people have very different ways of experiencing the world, they'll both struggle to understand each other. The difficulty is mutual, not one-sided.
Traditional autism research framed communication difficulties as an autistic deficit: autistic people fail to read social cues, miss nonverbal signals, and don't understand others' perspectives. The double empathy problem flips this by pointing out that non-autistic people are equally bad at reading autistic communication styles, understanding autistic perspectives, and interpreting autistic social cues. The difference is that only one group gets pathologized for it.
Research supports this reframe. Studies have shown that autistic people communicate effectively with other autistic people, and that non-autistic people struggle to read autistic emotions and intentions. The "empathy deficit" dissolves when you stop measuring autistic people against a neurotypical standard and start looking at the interaction itself.
In practice
What this can look like
- You communicate clearly and directly with your autistic friend, and the conversation flows naturally. In the same week, a neurotypical colleague completely misreads your tone in an email. The "social skills deficit" starts looking like a compatibility issue.
- A clinician tells a parent their autistic child "doesn't understand others' feelings." But the child reads other autistic children just fine—it's only the neurotypical communication style that trips them up.
Context
Clinical context
Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the "double empathy problem." Disability & Society, 27(6), 883-887. Subsequent research by Crompton et al. (2020) demonstrated that information transfer between autistic pairs is as effective as between non-autistic pairs.
Community note
The double empathy problem has become a cornerstone of autistic self-advocacy. It shifts the conversation from "autistic people need social skills training" to "everyone needs to learn how to communicate across neurotypes."
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