Autistic Traits, Theory of Mind, and Implications for IT Professionals’ Emotional Labor and Mental Well-Being
Authors: Jia, Ronnie; Riemenschneider, Cynthia K.; Jia, Heather H.
Journal: MIS Quarterly (2026)
<jats:p>Departing from the situation-centric approach common in emotional labor research, we adopt a trait-based perspective to examine how autistic traits shape IT professionals’ experiences of social demands and mental health. Across three quantitative studies—two with IT professionals and one with college students preparing for IT careers—we found that autistic traits are consistently central to IT identities. IT professionals as a group are likely underdiagnosed and, on average, exhibit elevated autistic traits, which, in turn, can heighten their emotional labor and erode mental well-being. Compared with the general population, IT professionals, on average, report substantially higher levels of anxiety and depression, with prevalence rates more than 2.3 times the norm, underscoring the potential mental health costs of sustained emotional labor. These findings suggest that emotional labor is not merely situational but anchored in dispositional factors that are widespread within the IT profession. Results from the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test further show that theory-of-mind processing is more laborious for IT students than for business management students, thus providing a…