Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

Reader 1

Jennifer Ma

Reader 2

Stacy Wood

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© 2025 Sam M Ryan

Abstract

Portrayals of autism on TV are frequently rife with negative portrayals and inaccuracies, but also contain positive portrayals (Jones et al., 2023). These inevitably both promote stigma and educate individuals about autistic individuals, and also serve to directly and/or indirectly impact their well being. The current study aims to explore how combinations of positive and negative TV portrayals of autism impact autistic viewers’ self esteem. Participants will be exposed to clips of fictional autistic characters on TV shows, and their self esteem will be assessed with the Self Esteem IAT. It is expected that participants who view higher ratios of positive to negative clips will experience increases in self esteem, while participants who view higher ratios of negative to positive clips will experience the opposite. Participants who view equal amounts of positive and negative portrayals are also expected to experience a slight decrease in self esteem, but less so than participants that view more negative than positive clips. This study aims to add to the literature by presenting a more life-like and realistic combination of positive and negative clips to participants, rather than either one of those in isolation.

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