HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Autism
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1594692
This article is part of the Research TopicWomen in Psychiatry 2025: AutismView all articles
Religiosity of Adults on the Autism Spectrum: A Cognitive and Empirical Analysis
Provisionally accepted
Agnieszka Ewa Burnos*
Gabriela Kopacz- University of Warsaw, Faculty od Psychology, Warsaw, Poland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This article presents a narrative theoretical and empirical review of religiosity in adults on the autism spectrum. Religiosity is defined as an individual set of beliefs and practices proposed by a religious institution or group. This topic is critical for better understanding the religious and spiritual needs of autistic individuals, as well as the barriers they may face in developing and practicing religiosity.Theoretical accounts of the relationship between the social and cognitive characteristics of individuals on the autism spectrum and their religious attitudes and behaviors are examined. These include theory of mind, weak central coherence, executive function deficits, restricted interests, need for predictability, cognitive rigidity, and the broken mirror hypothesis. Alongside these conceptual frameworks, the article reviews findings from nine empirical studies.The emerging picture of religiosity among autistic adults is complex and marked by inconsistency. The central hypothesis-that impairments in mentalizing reduce religiosity-has not been unequivocally supported by empirical evidence. Similarly, results regarding the overall level of religiosity and representations of God in autistic versus neurotypical individuals are inconclusive.The article offers a synthetic overview of existing hypotheses and provides recommendations for the design of future research in this area.
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Religion, Religiosity, Theory of Mind, autism
Received: 16 Mar 2025; Accepted: 27 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Burnos and Kopacz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Agnieszka Ewa Burnos, University of Warsaw, Faculty od Psychology, Warsaw, Poland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.