User:Mrwil8/Masking (personality)

Article Draft

Lead

People who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to mask themselves as a coping strategy, much like people who have autism will also mask, or camouflage, their symptoms in many social interactions.

Article body

Autism and ADHD share many similarities in their symptoms and social coping mechanisms, one of these coping mechanisms being masking, or camouflaging, which is the unconscious ritual where as certain symptoms of ADHD, such as stimming and impulsivity, will be suppressed in order to fit in to society's standards. Due to the similarities in social challenges that people with ADHD and Autism face, a study was conducted in order to see which population group tends to mask more, and though both communities do mask, it seems people with ADHD tend to mask less in public than those with autism.

References

van der Putten, W. J., Mol, A. J. J., Groenman, A. P., Radhoe, T. A., Torenvliet, C., van Rentergem, J. A. A., & Geurts, H. M. (2024). Is camouflaging unique for autism? A comparison of camouflaging between adults with autism and ADHD. Autism Research, 17(4), 812–823. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.3099

Instructor Feedback:

It is unclear how your proposed edits will fit in the context of the published Wikipedia article. I encourage you to copy over portions of that article and then to put your suggested edits and modifications in a distinct font (e.g., underline or bold). Your first sentence for the "Article body" is informative, but too complex. Break this up fo the reader. Ensure that the term autism isn't capitalized unless it is at the beginning of a sentence. Unfortunately, your cited reference doesn't conform to the expectations of Wikipedia. It isn't linked properly and while it is an example of peer-reviewed primary research, it is not secondary literature. You will want to ensure you are looking for and citing examples of peer-reviewed secondary literature published in the last 10 years.

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Lead (Revised:) - Personal Note: This is all drafting and sandboxing due to the peer reviews and instructor feedback, I wanted to keep my previous drafts to use as scaffolding and to look back at previous work vs after review.

• To begin, I decided to take the instructor's feedback + Raniya's advice to copy and paste from the article to make various edits.

Causes[edit]

See also: Performativity

The social drivers of masking include social discrimination, cultural dominance, and violence. Elizabeth Radulski argues that masking is a cultural performance within Judith Butler's concept of performativity that helps individuals bypass cultural and structural barriers.

Situational contexts[edit]

The causes of masking are highly contextual and situational. Masking may disguise emotions considered socially inappropriate within a situational context, such as anger, jealousy, or rage. Individuals may mask in certain social situations, such as job interviews or dates, or around people of different cultures, identities, or ethnicities. Since different social situations require different performances, individuals often switch masks and exhibit different masking behaviors in different contexts. Code-switching, although associated more with linguistics, also refers to the process of changing one's masking behavior around different cultures in social and cultural anthropology. Contextual factors including relationships with one's conversation partner, social capital (class) differences, location, and social setting are all reasons why an individual would express, suppress, or mask an emotion.

Autistic masking[edit]

Main article: Autistic masking

Autistic masking, also referred to as camouflaging, is the conscious or subconscious suppression of autistic behaviors or the compensation of difficulties in social interaction by autistic people with the goal of being perceived as neurotypical. It is a learned coping strategy.

Typical examples of autistic masking include the suppression of stimming and a common reaction to sensory overload. To compensate difficulties in social interaction with neurotypical peers, autistic people might maintain eye contact despite discomfort, use rehearsed conversational scripts, or mirror the body language and tone of others.

Gender Differences

There is a gendered disparity in masking behavior; studies show women mask negative emotions to a greater extent than men. According to psychologist Teresa Davis, this may be due to the greater social expectation for conformity placed on female gender roles, causing women to develop the skill to a greater extent than men during childhood socialization.

Research suggests that there are noticeable differences in social camouflaging between males and females, with the claim that females are more prevalent in masking their personalities in social situations more than men. Due to the autism gender gap, the scenario in which autism within females is not as recognized as it is in males, females often times have a harder time getting a diagnosis of autism at an earlier age, bringing a more pressured conforming to social cues and reciprocity to social situations, leading to higher cases of female autistic individuals masking more often. Not only this, but due to females with ASD learning to mask at such early stages of life, many females will remain undiagnosed, or get a late diagnosis of autism.

Environment also plays a role in autistic females learning how to mask themselves more than male autistic individuals. Females with ASD have a higher tendency to learn through a series of mimicking others, this would lead ultimately lead to females with ASD learning how to mask as if it was second nature.

Virtual World

Individuals with autism tend to have an easier time being able to unmask and express themselves freely on social media platforms, with various communities that either allow those to discuss their personal issues with masking, or even just being able to filter out and surround theirselves and consume medias of their interests, such as video games. Reports of individuals with autism say they feel as if they are able to be more of themselves when immersed in the worlds of social media and video games.

Consequences[edit]

Little is known about the effects of masking one's negative emotions. In the workplace, masking leads to feelings of dissonance, insincerity, job dissatisfaction, emotional and physical exhaustion, and self-reported health problems. Some have also reported experiencing somatic symptoms and harmful physiological and cognitive effects as a consequence. Masking also brings in reports of loneliness, due to the fact that many are having to suppress their identity to socially fit in, unable to form real connections because they can only be accepted when they conform to society's standards. This interrelates with reports stating that they have lost their true identity as an autistic individual, feeling as if they only play a role for the majority of their lives.

Though there are many disadvantages to masking for individuals, many report the benefits masking has brought for them. Such reports stated that individuals felt as if became easier to socialize, to uphold careers, build relationships, and even at times, were able to protect themselves.

Masking requires an exceptional effort. It is linked with adverse mental health outcomes such as stress, autistic burnout, anxiety and other psychological disorders, loss of identity, and suicidality. Some studies find that compensation strategies are seen as contributing to leading a successful and satisfactory life.

References:

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/102209993/costs-camouflaging-autism-libre.pdf?1684080803=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DThe_costs_of_camouflaging_autism.pdf&Expires=1719120454&Signature=U50Cf3TUgJUgzTgpJiQ8B1ixvKDMXypaRtML8sAOBnpLHWZo~27uWpp8rN-eJZCsPqPZLnYRq2RhpOcXkngeHCqORPyFzOKes33eM4apLLrpcyeOt4DVX7XqDuaFGcpoiOtTn08ZSpzRJpQeWpPtJQ1HEfJSZ36UFmplJCAqLBldRX6hHtOGpqd47mZZ1~LLlv3OcaiYKFvXcIl3K9M~7PkTJqKgT4s-iiOQsLvr5oHKQWNj~93NtfnjALxVNiSpexfoWPhTvizoqqhQlprFzaUbS0e82LhT7dgKbBC~IvlnQKpGKL49nSsp02yHW1PlDh1yHWvwphBLQJwz~rp~-g__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

Summary: (Will be removed/edited later! Last Edit: Jun 22, 2024)

• As stated above, I took both the instructor and Raniya's feedback to copy and paste from the article itself and add/tweak various information. After reading through M. Alex's review, I also decided I may need to do further research and hash out better explanations of the differences between ADHD and Autsim masking. I need to find more in depth articles and researches on the differences, many of the information I know came from previous courses, so I am looking into finding those old textbooks and powerpoints, and maybe considering reaching out to an instructor.
• I wanted to separate myself from hashing out the differences between ADHD/Autism masking for a little bit, and work on just adding bits of new information - Just to get the hang of the situation now that I have a better insight on what to do. The reference isn't embedded in the proper way, but I will fix this later, just wanting this report to be able to access due to Akeiah's review where she said there were some issues accessing those articles, so I decided this will do for now as I go back and re-read the instructions on how to properly link a reference to make sure I have it correct.