An investigation into empathy in autistic and non-autistic people: Improving empathy measurement and understanding the autistic empathy profile

Empathy is a complex multidimensional construct that plays a vital role in social interactions. There has been a mischaracterisation that autistic individuals do not experience empathy. Research on autism and empathy has identified several issues in the area of assessment of empathy. For instance, self-report measures of empathy do not assess across positive and negative emotions, and no questionnaire has been demonstrated to have adequate psychometric properties within an autistic sample. The overarching goal of this thesis was to examine empathic abilities related to autism by addressing empathy measurement and then investigate underlying processes driving empathic differences.