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• Posted May 8, 2026

TV, Movies Offer Flawed Depictions Of Autism, Add To Delayed Diagnosis, Study Says

Stereotypes of autistic men in films and TV could be contributing to delayed autism diagnosis of women and non-binary people, a new study argues.

Characters like Sheldon Cooper in "The Big Bang Theory" and Raymond Babbitt in "Rain Man" are designed to be immediately identifiable to people without autism, researchers said.

But these portrayals are overly exaggerated and simplified, to the point that they’re not relatable to people who have autism, researchers reported in a recent study in the journal Societies.

“This study highlights how powerful representation can be,” lead researcher Sarah Dantas said in news release. Dantas is a doctoral student with the University of Stirling in Scotland.

“When autism is portrayed narrowly, it can limit both public understanding and self-understanding,” she said. “Participants described how stereotypical portrayals contributed to delayed diagnosis both for themselves and others, including their children.”

For the new study, researchers held a series of in-person focus group sessions involving four women with autism. Three were clinically diagnosed and one was self-diagnosed.

In these sessions, the participants worked together to create self-published booklets called zines. These zines included drawings, collage, writing and poetry that described how media portrayals had shaped their experiences and understanding of autism.

Participants said media portrayals are typically dehumanizing, reducing people to a narrow set of traits and deficits. These characters lack complexity, autonomy and emotional depth.

“Looking at typical characters, look how broad the range is," one participant named Andrea said. "They can be anything, anybody, anywhere. Yet, when you see autistic characters or any sort of disabled characters, they tend to fit inside this one small box. Neurodivergent people aren’t just neurodivergent, they are an entire person beyond that.”

Another participant, Isla, reported that media stereotypes contributed to a late diagnosis of autism for both herself and her daughter.

“Because of what I had read, or what I had learnt, (. . .) I’ve never recognized it in myself, never recognized it in her,” Isla said. “If I had been able to look at that differently, with different knowledge, factual, proper knowledge, then things could have been different.”

Dantas offered a simple analysis.

“Because the dominant image of autism did not match their own experiences, they didn’t recognize it as a possibility,” she said. “In some cases, this meant that signs were overlooked or dismissed for years.”

Even reality TV offers up stark stereotypes of autism, participants said.

“In 'Love on the Spectrum,' you always see the people’s mums, or dads, or caretakers, whatever. On any other dating show, how often are you seeing the person’s mum?” Andrea said of the Netflix TV show.

She noted one scene where a man with autism had decided to go look at penguins in his favorite place.

“Everybody’s like, oh my god, where is he? And he’s an adult at this point, and everybody’s freaking out because they don’t know where he is, and then they find him and he’s just chilling, looking at something that he enjoys,” Andrea said.

Dantas noted that traditional autism has been defined largely by professionals who are not autistic, often through a medical or deficit-focused lens.

“This means that autistic people’s own testimony about their lived experiences have not always been treated as equally valid or important,” she said, adding that this imbalance has consequences.

“When representations are shaped without autistic input, they can become dehumanizing and disconnected from lived reality," Dantas said. "By contrast, when autistic people can define and share their own experiences, representations become more nuanced, accurate and meaningful.”

Participants emphasized repeatedly that their most helpful and transformative understandings of autism came from other people with autism. 

“This reinforces the importance of centering lived experience, not only in research but also in media and public discourse," Dantas said.

More information

Autism Self Advocacy Network has more resources about autism.

SOURCES: University of Stirling, news release, May 6, 2026; Societies, April 29, 2026