What masking is

Masking, also called camouflaging, is a set of strategies some autistic people use in social situations to hide autistic traits or to work around differences in social communication.^1,2 Pearson and Rose give a wider definition: the conscious or unconscious suppression of natural responses, and the use of substitutes, in social interaction, sensory experience, thinking, movement and behavior.⁴ A critical review of 389 studies found the two words used inconsistently, sometimes for the same thing and sometimes for different things.³

The reasons autistic adults give are mainly to fit in, to connect with others and to avoid stigma or rejection, and a review of 58 studies described camouflaging as mainly a response to social pressure.^2,5 Why people mask covers the motives, Measuring masking the questionnaires and Costs of masking the links with exhaustion and mental health.

Most of this research involves white women diagnosed in adulthood, without intellectual disability, so its findings may not describe autistic people in general.^5,3 An earlier review found the research limited in how participants were described and how representative they were.¹

Accounts of autistic people's lived experience described passing as non-autistic long before research took it up, according to a systematic review of studies on the subject. The review found 46 studies up to May 2020, after a sharp recent rise, using many different terms; masking and camouflage were the most frequent. Nearly all the studies excluded people with intellectual disability.⁶

Several of the papers that shaped the research vocabulary appeared in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, 14 women diagnosed in late adolescence or adulthood described "pretending to be normal".⁷ In 2017, one team first measured camouflaging in 60 autistic adults by comparing how autistic they appeared in a clinical assessment with how autistic they described themselves.⁸ A playground study titled "The art of camouflage" watched autistic girls stay close to their peers and weave in and out of games, which appeared to hide their social difficulties.⁹ An online study of 92 autistic adults, "Putting on my best normal", set out the parts described in the next section.² The same year, Livingston and Happé proposed compensation as a concept for all neurodevelopmental conditions, using autism as the example.¹⁰

Pearson and Rose write that masking is the term autistic people themselves use, and take it as the umbrella for camouflaging, compensation and related ideas. They draw on Goffman's account of stigma, in which people try to conceal a stigmatized trait and "pass" as normal. Although masking has been called "social camouflage", they point out, little research has looked at the social setting in which it starts and is kept up. They argue that masking is an unsurprising response to the deficit-focused account of autism and the stigma that comes with it, and they argue against tying masking to a "female autism phenotype".⁴ The word itself has critics. In an editorial, Fombonne argued that "camouflage" fits autism poorly because it suggests intended deception, and compared "camouflaged autism" with older clinical ideas built on the claim that what is seen is not what is there.³³ Researchers who study camouflaging replied that the concept needs better measurement and validation.³⁴

In the 2017 online study (55 women, 30 men and 7 people of other genders), the researchers grouped what people described into two techniques. Masking meant hiding autistic characteristics and developing personas for social situations. Compensation meant explicit strategies to make up for social and communication difficulties. Assimilation, wanting to blend in, appeared as one of the motives.²

The Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q), built from these accounts and published in 2019, made assimilation a third kind of strategy: trying to fit in with others. It has 25 items in three factors and was first tested online in 354 autistic and 478 non-autistic adults.¹¹ Later tests disagree on how well the three factors hold up. The original study reported that the factors worked the same way for autistic and non-autistic adults.¹¹ A French version, answered by 744 autistic and 483 non-autistic people, fitted the three factors well but did not repeat that result: the items seemed to mean different things to the two groups.¹² A Swedish version, answered by 100 autistic people and 539 from the general population, did not fit the original structure well, and worked least well under age 15.¹³ In 308 autistic adults, the assimilation items overlapped most with questions about autistic social traits.¹⁴

Livingston and Happé define compensation as whatever produces a mismatch between how a person behaves and the thinking underneath, so that someone appears to have fewer social difficulties than their results on tests of social understanding would predict.¹⁰ The framework treats theory-of-mind tasks as the measure of that underlying thinking, and those tasks are disputed: a review by Gernsbacher and Yergeau found that they often fail to relate to each other or to autistic traits and social interaction.³⁵ They separate two kinds. Shallow compensation is like a white stick for someone who cannot see: it gets the person past obstacles without standing in for sight. Deep compensation is like echolocation, an alternative route to much the same ability.¹⁰ They suggest that compensation may come at a cost, and that social-skills programs teaching explicit rules, such as how to make eye contact, may be training the shallow kind.¹⁰

The same group has tested parts of the framework. In a sample of 136 twins aged 10 to 15 with autism or milder autistic traits, mostly boys, the 41 whose social behavior in a diagnostic assessment was good despite low scores on theory-of-mind tasks had higher IQ, better executive function and more self-reported anxiety than the 40 whose behavior matched their low scores. The same differences did not appear between good and poor performers on the assessment among adolescents who did well on the tasks, and the authors suggested that the well-compensated group did not simply have a milder form of autism. The study measured everything at one time and cannot show causes.¹⁵ In an online study of 136 adults, people without a diagnosis who reported social difficulties described strategies much like those of diagnosed people.¹⁶ Coding those accounts produced 31 strategies of four types: masking, shallow compensation, deep compensation and accommodation (finding settings where one's differences are accepted). More shallow compensation went with having a diagnosis, more autistic traits and more education, though once traits and education were taken into account, diagnosis no longer predicted it. Compensation scores were unrelated to age at diagnosis, and no sex difference was found, in a sample with few men to compare: the 117 participants (95 of them women) were self-selected and mostly highly educated.¹⁷

In the 2017 study, autistic adults described holding back stims and reactions to sensory overload, using objects as discreet props to meet sensory needs, and finding excuses to leave places that overwhelmed them. Some built characters for different settings, treating clothes as costumes, and copied other people's speech, body language and even interests, sometimes learned from television and films. Many forced themselves to make eye contact, put on facial expressions they did not feel, and followed conversation rules such as asking the other person questions and saying little about themselves.² Strategies reported in another study included following learned scripts and social rules, making or appearing to make "appropriate" eye contact, and repeating back what the other person said to seem a good listener.¹⁷

When 17 autistic adults watched a video of their own conversation with a stranger, they identified 38 different camouflaging behaviors.¹⁸ Accounts of eye contact suggest why forcing it costs effort: in public forum posts and videos from 364 teenagers and adults who described themselves as autistic, people reported strong emotional and physical reactions, a sense of being invaded, and sensory overload.¹⁹ Among 31 autistic adults interviewed about stimming, many hid their stims or turned them into more accepted movements after negative reactions, and several had stimmed freely as young children but hid it by secondary school.²⁰ In a survey that compared groups, hiding stims and suppressing sensory reactions came up only among autistic respondents.²¹

Pearson and Rose stress that masking has unconscious parts and is "not necessarily a choice", while most research has studied the conscious, visible strategies. Self-report measures capture only what people notice themselves doing, which makes the unconscious side hard to measure.⁴ When the Livingston group classified the strategies described in one online sample, they characterized masking strategies (turning existing behavior up or down) as not very tiring and able to become automatic with time, and shallow compensation, such as scripts and planned eye contact, as fairly tiring and less likely to become automatic.^17,16 That characterization sits uneasily with the many accounts of masking as exhausting.^21,5

How much people mask also changes with the company. In the 2017 study, camouflaging happened less often with close friends and family, though some respondents described doing it all the time.² In the video-recall study, participants sometimes socialized in more autistic ways instead of camouflaging.²² Pearson and Rose propose that the unconscious side may develop as a way of lowering the strain of keeping masking up, by distancing oneself from it.⁴

Non-autistic people also answer camouflaging questionnaires, and autistic people score higher on average.^11,13,23 Such comparisons assume the items mean the same thing to both groups, which a French study questioned.¹² The gap is uneven across the three parts. In the questionnaire's first sample, autistic adults scored much higher than non-autistic adults on compensation and assimilation, and only slightly higher on masking.¹¹ A meta-analysis found the same pattern in the five studies that compared the parts: higher scores on assimilation and compensation, and no clear difference on masking.²³ Among non-autistic adults, those with more autistic traits or weaker social skills report more camouflaging.^25,26

Everyone adjusts how they come across. Ai, Cunningham and Lai propose treating camouflaging as one form of this impression management, with particular challenges for autistic people and a psychological toll when it feels compelled.²⁷ Pearson and Rose suggest a difference: ordinary shifts between settings bring a different side of a person forward, while masking hides the autistic self. They note that this has hardly been studied.⁴ Autistic adults interviewed in Israel discussed how camouflaging relates to impression management and how it differs, and described autistic ways of communicating as an alternative to both.²⁸

Studies comparing groups find much in common. In an online survey of 144 autistic people, 49 non-autistic neurodivergent people and 45 neurotypical people, all groups described copying others and feeling cut off from who they are, and autistic and non-autistic respondents alike described exhaustion. Hiding stims, suppressing sensory reactions and masking leading to suicidal thoughts came up only among autistic respondents. More women took part, and some non-autistic respondents may have been undiagnosed autistic people. The authors concluded that autistic masking is likely similar to other forms of stigma management.²¹ At work, autistic, other neurodivergent and neurotypical adults all described masking as protection against bad social and job outcomes, and the neurodivergent groups described extra pressure because neurodiversity is little understood.²⁹ In 254 Polish adults, total camouflaging scores did not differ between those with autism, with social anxiety disorder, or with both, though compensation was higher in the groups with autism and masking higher in the social anxiety group.³⁰ In 115 teenagers, masking went with social anxiety rather than autistic traits, in autistic and non-autistic groups alike.³¹ In a survey using described partners, autistic adults reported more camouflaging toward an autistic partner than a neurotypical one, a result its authors say questions the idea that autistic people camouflage only to blend into a neurotypical majority.³²

Autistic writers use the research words, with their own emphasis. Devon Price, an autistic social psychologist, separates camouflage, "obscuring one's unique qualities and struggles", from compensation, "crafting little hacks and cheats" to get needs met without asking for accommodations.^c1 Megan Anna Neff, an autistic psychologist, lists "masking or camouflaging" among the signs of internalized ableism, and describes compensatory strategies as "forcing yourself to do unnatural things in order to appear less Autistic", such as making small talk at a party when low on social energy.^c2,c3 Sol Smith, an autistic coach, prefers "masking", noting that some people choose "camouflaging" because it conveys "fitting in to the point of disappearing".^c4

Amy Pearson, an autistic psychologist, and Kieran Rose, an autistic trainer and researcher, returned to the subject in a 2023 book, two years after their conceptual paper. They use masking as an umbrella term for "the conscious or unconscious suppression or projection of aspects of self and identity, and the use of non-native cognitive or social strategies", and call it "an imperfect and loaded term". It overlaps with code-switching and concealment, they write, and "is not just an 'autistic thing'".^c11 Rose's idea of "projecting acceptability" widens it beyond hiding: a person gives others what they expect to see, which can mean seeming more autistic as well as less. On these grounds they object to reducing masking to passing as neurotypical, and to the label "high masking", which they argue implies that nonspeaking autistic people and people with learning disabilities do not mask. They also suggest that growing up stigmatized may seep into the ordinary impression management everyone does, until it is hard to tell where everyday adjustment ends and inauthenticity begins.^c12

Passing is an older word for part of this. A clinicians' guide by Henderson, Wayland and White lists "passing as non-autistic" and "pretending to be normal" among the names for camouflaging. It says everyone camouflages at times, but many autistic people do it "far more frequently, for longer periods of time" and with far more effort. Matthew G., an autistic contributor to the guide, writes: "Camouflaging is like speaking a second language."^c13 Brigid Rankowski, writing in Sincerely, Your Autistic Child, credits hours of copying television characters: "My skills of echolalia and mimicry helped me 'pass' for years until the fateful day when all my coping skills went away."^c14 Lea, diagnosed at 43, writes of coping mechanisms built "in an effort to 'pass'" that are now so ingrained that "I can't tell you their specifics."^c15 Nick Walker writes that "the suppression of non-neuronormative embodiments is commonly referred to as masking", and compares the pressure to pass for normal with the pressure on queer people to stay closeted.^c16

Writers describe the practices in detail. Price lists ways of seeming normal, such as studying what other people like "in a systematic, analytical way" and imitating the mannerisms, dress and tone of voice of people or characters.^c1 Price calls mirroring, "lightly mimicking the actions and emotions of another person", a common people-pleasing tactic among autistic people.^c5 Neff describes masking people as "conversational chameleons" who take on the accent and body language of whoever they are talking to.^c6 In a later book Price describes writing out whole conversations in advance, and says people picked up on "the gaming" and kept their distance.^c7 Smith recalls a doctor doubting autism because of good eye contact, and laughing, having "a long list of eye contact work-arounds".^c8

On whether masking is chosen, Megan Griffith writes that it is "often not even a conscious decision, especially for those of us who started masking very young". Griffith describes ignoring a partner who pointed out how differently she acted with family, friends and him, because "I thought it was neurotypical contextual behavior", and names an inner voice telling you to make eye contact as one sign of masking.^c9 Smith writes that "for the most part, we have not chosen to adopt the masks we wear".^c4 Daniel Burford, a late-diagnosed autistic writer, tells readers that the mask was put on them early rather than chosen, and separates it from what they learned along the way: "The social skills you learned are yours now, and using them is not a performance if they don't cost you anything."^c17 Daniel M. Jones, an autistic YouTuber, calls masking "a survival technique" and writes that all people mask at times when they need to fit in.^c10