Autism Phenotype and Big 5 Personality Expression: A Correlational Study Using Autism Quotient

Autism-Spectrum is a multifaceted continuum of traits that negatively affects social and cognitive function. Some of these functions have indirect and direct parallels to certain personality traits. This leads to trending research claiming that the expression of autistic phenotype strength correlates negatively with all Big 5 personality traits, which this study attempts to validate in the adolescent population. A two-part, matched pairs self-report questionnaire was designed adapting two ten-item questionnaires that identify personality traits and autism phenotype expression using Autism Quotient (AQ) and Big 5 personality traits. Students in a special education program at a local high school were asked to take the questionnaire. In total, 10 students participated in the study. Using Pearson correlation, there were inconsistent results regarding the correlation between AQ and specific Big 5 Personality traits. This was further confirmed to not be significant using one-tailed linear regression t-tests for each personality trait.. This study hopes to lay the groundwork for future, larger-scale research using this format, hopefully within more randomized frameworks for generalization and more significant results.