Why people mask

When researchers ask autistic people why they mask, the answers center on other people. A review of 58 studies, most of them interviews, concluded that camouflaging is "primarily a socially motivated response". It grouped what goes with masking under three themes: the norms and pressures of a largely non-autistic world, being accepted or rejected, and self-esteem and identity. It also described masking as, for some, a practical way of exercising agency and control.¹

The first large interview study, of 92 autistic adults (55 women, 30 men and 7 of another gender), found two motives. One was fitting in, which the authors called assimilation. The other was connecting with others, in a participant's words "to know and be known".²

Who has been asked matters. The review's 4,808 autistic participants were mostly white, female, diagnosed late and likely of at least average intellectual or verbal ability.¹ A review of 46 studies of passing as non-autistic found that nearly all excluded people with intellectual disability and fewer than a quarter reported participants' race or ethnicity.²⁰ Little is known about why autistic people outside these groups mask.

A survey of 262 autistic adults asked how strongly each of a list of reasons applied. The answers fell into two clusters. "Conventional" reasons were about getting by at work or in education: getting a job, doing well, being taken seriously. "Relational" reasons were about people: making friends, seeming likeable, attracting a partner, fitting in. Women and men both rated conventional reasons higher than relational ones, and women rated them higher than men did. The reason "to reduce stigma, stereotypes or discrimination against you" fitted neither cluster.³

Work comes up again and again. In the 92-adult interview study, people said jobs and qualifications were harder to get when they seemed more autistic, and that camouflaging improved their chances.² A UK survey of 285 autistic, 88 other neurodivergent and 99 neurotypical adults found that all three groups described masking at work as protection against bad social and employment outcomes. The autistic and other neurodivergent participants described extra pressure to mask because colleagues and employers understand neurodiversity poorly.⁴

In the 92-adult study, many people said they camouflaged to stay safe. Many described being shut out or verbally attacked when they had not, and some had been physically assaulted, most often in childhood and adolescence.² In the 262-adult survey, 91 people added reasons in their own words: 42 wrote about fitting in and passing in a neurotypical world, and 34 about avoiding retaliation and bullying.³ Eight autistic girls aged 12 to 15, attending resource bases attached to mainstream schools in South-East England, described hiding strategies driven by a wish to avoid bullying or humiliation; their masking often did not work, which strained their friendships and sense of belonging.⁶

The fear has a basis. Two meta-analyses put the share of autistic students who had been bullied at 44% (17 studies) and 67% (34 studies), with estimates varying widely by country, school setting and how bullying was measured. Both found autistic students more often bullied than typically developing students, and the larger one found more bullying in inclusive school settings.^5,22

Masking also depends on the audience. Thirty-one autistic girls in US high schools masked most in general classes and with teachers and classmates they did not know well, and least at home or with neurodivergent friends.²¹

Adults describe learning to mask by watching. In the 92-adult study, people copied behavior from others in conversation, from watching others interact, and from television and films; some copied clothes, mannerisms and even interests. Many said relations with others improved as they got older and better at camouflaging.² In a study that filmed 17 autistic adults talking with a stranger, participants said they wanted to socialize and be valued, but that negative past experiences left them unsure they could, so they camouflaged.⁹

Studies of young people suggest masking is under way by early adolescence. In 119 girls aged 11 to 14, camouflaging was already present both in the 70 with autism, ADHD or developmental coordination disorder and in the 49 without. The groups scored alike on most of the measure but differed on assimilation, the feeling of pretending in order to fit in, which was higher in the neurodivergent girls. Older girls reported more camouflaging than younger ones. The sample mixed several conditions, so it says little about autistic girls on their own.⁷ In 733 autistic children and adolescents aged 4 to 17, the gap between parents' and clinicians' ratings of the child's autistic traits, an indirect measure of camouflaging, was larger in adolescents than in younger children.⁸

Pearson and Rose argue that masking should be studied as something that develops, asking when it starts and what keeps it going.¹⁰ Those questions remain open: no study found as of October 2026 answers them.

Many autistic children are taught to behave in neurotypical ways. Seven autistic adults who had applied behavior analysis (ABA) as children described remembered trauma, said they did not believe they should be made to behave like their peers, and reported some benefits alongside significant long-term harm.¹¹

A systematic review has now drawn 19 studies of autistic adults' views and experiences of early intervention for young children into one picture. Ten were qualitative, four were quantitative (three surveys and one study of forum posts) and five were mixed. Most asked adults what they thought of early support whether or not they had received it. The reviewers found a consistent theme they called "damage done": adults who had been through behavioral interventions recalled forced compliance, having their bodily autonomy overridden, and learning to treat seeming non-autistic as the goal, and they read the accounts as agreeing that support should accept autistic lives rather than work to remove autistic traits.²⁵

In the four studies that rated intervention goals, autistic adults put safety, well-being, adult support and reducing harmful behavior above reducing autistic traits such as stimming and eye contact, and the studies agreed on this.²⁵ The review's authors report that the surveys gave more mixed ratings than the interviews; in its one study drawn from a forum, 56% of autistic adults' messages approved of ABA, against 84% of parents'. The adults studied were mostly white women diagnosed late, so their views may not match those of the children these therapies are aimed at.²⁵

A survey put the same questions to 33 autistic adults and 37 parents of young autistic children. Parents rated ABA as appropriate, effective and beneficial, with average scores above 5 on a 6-point scale, and said they would recommend it. Autistic adults rated it lower and reported more concern about side effects. Both groups wanted early intervention to be naturalistic, to follow the child's lead and to be centered on the person.²⁶

In interviews with 11 UK autistic adults about social skills training, some described bad experiences, and some suggested that using social skills that felt inauthentic could lead to masking.¹² These accounts fit the critique of treating autistic behavior as a problem to fix, discussed under Ableism and Models of disability, and set out at length in ABA and behavioral therapy.

One study has measured camouflaging around a therapy, though not one that trains neurotypical behavior. In 71 autistic adults who took an 8-week group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) program for social anxiety, average camouflaging scores did not change significantly. Those whose social anxiety fell most also showed the largest falls in camouflaging. The study had no comparison group.¹³

Several surveys link masking to stigma. In 223 autistic adults, those who perceived more stigma about autism reported more camouflaging. Stigma also went with lower wellbeing, and camouflaging did not account for that link.¹⁴ A study of 287 autistic adults in Japan, which shares two authors with the first, found the same association. There, camouflaging statistically mediated the link between stigma and depression, generalized anxiety and social anxiety, though not wellbeing, and went with both hiding and embracing autistic traits as ways of coping with stigma.¹⁵ In 330 autistic adults aged 18 to 39 in Japan, recruited through a job site for people with developmental disabilities, those who reported more ableist microaggressions (small, everyday slights about disability) reported more of all three kinds of camouflaging; lonelier people reported more effort to blend in. Lower acceptance by others and loneliness statistically mediated the link with blending in, while self-acceptance did not, which the authors read as treatment by others mattering more than self-acceptance. This study shares an author with the second.¹⁶

These findings sit within the minority stress model, which holds that people in a stigmatized group carry extra stress from that status. Applied to 111 autistic adults whom the authors described as "high-functioning", it found that everyday discrimination, internalized stigma and concealment each went with poorer mental health in that sample, after allowing for general stress.¹⁷

Masking is not unique to autistic people. In an online survey of 144 autistic, 49 other neurodivergent and 45 neurotypical adults, many parts of masking were shared across groups, which the authors link to how others perceive difference and to stigma. Only autistic participants mentioned hiding sensory reactions, and only they described masking leading to suicidal thoughts. Most respondents were women, and the authors note that some in the comparison groups may have been undiagnosed autistic people.¹⁸

Self-report masking scales may partly measure social anxiety. In 254 adults in Poland, most of them women, total camouflaging scores did not differ between autistic people, people with social anxiety disorder and people with both, and social anxiety and burnout mattered more than autistic traits.²³ In 115 adolescents with and without autism, matched on social anxiety, masking related to social anxiety rather than to autistic traits, and its items overlapped with the safety behaviors of social anxiety.²⁴ Part of the link between stigma and masking may therefore run through anxiety.

Pearson and Rose argue that masking is "an unsurprising response" to the deficit story told about autism and the stigma around it. They draw on social identity theory, which describes how members of a devalued group either try to pass as members of the valued group or work to change how their group is seen. They stress that masking is not necessarily a choice and has unconscious parts.¹⁰ Perry and colleagues tested one prediction of this view, that camouflaging is an individual way of coping with stigma. Camouflaging went with individual strategies, but also with collective ones, and the Japanese study found a similar mix.^14,15

Ai, Cunningham and Lai propose another reading: camouflaging as a form of impression management, the managing of how one comes across that all people do, shaped by the setting and the people in it. They also point to the particular difficulties autistic people face in doing it.¹⁹

Autistic writers often describe masking as survival. Daniel M. Jones calls it "a survival technique" and describes getting through school by "masking myself as a shark", while noting that all people mask at times when they need to fit in.^c9 Sol Smith writes that people not identified as autistic in childhood saw how identified children were treated, and "we worked to camouflage ourselves so that we wouldn't be so terribly mistreated".^c6 Smith also writes: "The primary function of our masks is to fit in."^c7 Orion Kelly, an autistic writer and parent, calls masking "a choice, but only because the neurotypical world seemingly rejects our differences", and writes that autistic children learn that "masking equals friends".^c15

Amy Pearson, an autistic psychologist, and Kieran Rose, an autistic trainer and researcher, make the stigma argument at book length, building on their 2021 paper. They write that "the pathologisation of autistic social communication is a direct path to masking": autistic people are pressed to use social skills that are not native to them, while non-autistic people face no such demand. They describe trauma, from abuse to being disbelieved, as feeding masking directly, and also indirectly, by teaching that being authentic is unsafe.^c12 Pete Wharmby, an autistic writer, draws on their work to call masking "first and foremost a trauma response", "a kind of fawning to the aggressor".^c13 See Friendship for fawning.

Writers place the start of masking in childhood. Devon Price traces it to "key moments in childhood or adolescence where we learn we are embarrassing or wrong".^c2 Price quotes the folklorist Anand Prahlad, a Black autistic writer: "I learned to grow masks for school."^c10 Daniel Burford, a late-diagnosed autistic writer, recalls whistling in a noisy maths lesson as a boy, owning up, then denying it when the teacher asked again, and never whistling at school again; what it taught, Burford writes, was that "the room was full of noise and only mine was a crime".^c14 Megan Griffith argues that "masking is a trauma response, not an autistic trait", and that for people who started very young it is often not a conscious decision.^c8

Price argues that ABA "is focused on training Autistic kids to fake a neurotypical personality",^c2 and that most social skills trainings ask autistic people to make eye contact and "feign polite interest in other people's lives".^c11 Alyssa Zisk, writing in the collection Loud Hands, describes hiding from anyone who might diagnose them after seeing what was done to autistic children as therapy: passing for normal was out of reach, but "I could pass for merely weird as long as I avoided the people who thought they were helping".^c16 Price compares masking to being closeted: "all Autistic people are expected at birth to behave like neurotypicals."^c3

Safety, writers say, depends on who you are. Timotheus Gordon Jr., an autistic researcher interviewed by Price, chooses how to stim depending on the Chicago neighborhood he is in, for fear of being robbed, arrested or attacked.^c1 Black autistic writers differ on what follows. Melissa Simmonds, a Black autistic woman writing in the UK, describes Black families teaching autistic children to suppress themselves because staying alive and out of prison comes first: "we stifle our kids to keep them free".^c17 Cheyenne Thornton, a Black autistic advocate quoted by Jules Edwards, rejects the claim by some behavior therapists that children of color must learn to mask for their safety: "A lifetime of subservience and discomfort is not the answer to racism".^c18 Price also writes that for many autistic people "to remain gainfully employed necessarily means to remain masked".^c5 Price holds both sides of the survival framing: "Sometimes, masking is necessary. But the fact that it is necessary does not make it good".^c4