The “beauty is good” for children with autism spectrum disorders too

The “beauty is good” (BIG) stereotype is a robust and extensively documented social stereotype. While one may think that children with autism are impervious to the BIG stereotype, given their remarkable difficulties in the social sphere, this issue has not yet been addressed. We have asked 18 children with autism to judge how friendly and intelligent faces appeared. They were then asked to judge the same faces on beauty, and their responses were compared to that of 18-matched controls, as well as to 71 typically developing children. Results revealed similar beauty judgements across the groups. Importantly, children with autism also showed a BIG stereotype, considering friendly and intelligent the beautiful faces, and unfriendly and not intelligent the ugly faces, just like their matched controls and typical children. These findings raise critical questions on stereotype acquisition as well as on the characterization of autism as a global social disability.