Seems like an extension of the observation that very introverted people can unexpectedly flourish in acting professions: I think people who are socially awkward can have an easier time compartmentalizing their social anxieties when under a persona because there's a part of the brain that can say, "It's not me; I'm playing a role."
You arguably have a "script" in D&D, too, in the form of your character sheet. "I am a chaotic neutral dwarf. I will act aggressively towards elves.", etc. You are encouraged to act and speak as your character, not as yourself.
I think it is not really a "script"; it is a description of the character. This will affect as you will do in the game, and you will have to make it up what happens according to the circumstances as it is being done, instead of everything being written ahead of time. (Even if you do have plans, which you might (I often will, and the GM also often will), things will happen unexpectedly and cannot use the plans exactly like they are anyways.)
I think that you do not generally need game mechanical traits in your character sheet to do this; you can write it in a spare section if you want to do (it is useful to have spare sections for this and other purposes; I will often want to add many extra notes that there are not pre-defined sections for).
In GURPS, you would generally represent some of such things with mental disadvantages and quirks. I prefer to not use mental disadvantages unless I specifically want the game effects of those disadvantages (e.g. if you are unlucky, or cursed, or take only half as many turns as other characters, or you will tell the truth half of the time that you do not intend to do so, etc), and would generally rather have a choice, even if my character's personality is supposed to be something, I can do it by myself instead of making the game to try to do it for me. I do usually add quirks though, and I do more often want physical and social disadvantages.
Introversion seems like it would be orthogonal to acting ability. Acting does need a very strong model of the 'other', though. An actor needs to be able to model how someone else might be feeling and more importantly, manifesting those feelings externally. So while an introvert might be a good actor someone on the autism spectrum might not be.
The idea that autistic people have poor "theory of mind" is a myth, with no supporting evidence. I'm sure Simon Baron–Cohen believed it, but all the experiments he ran to support it are flawed. Last I checked, he considers the theory discredited.
The true observation is more like “untrained people have a better intuition for the behaviour of people who think like them”. When the researchers are all allistic, and the experiments are all based on allistic psychology, the researchers find that autistic people “don't understand other people” – but that's experimental error.
I expect we'll be stuck with this ToM myth for a while, like we're stuck with Sigmund Freud's nonsense. (I mean, “Oedipus complex”, seriously? We have empirical evidence for the Westermarck effect!) But that doesn't make it true.
It's not controversial. It is wrong (or, at least, misleading), since:
• Allistic people have difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people; and
• Autistic people have considerably less difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people (even though there are fewer autistic people from which to learn that skill).
It's placing "blame" on autistic people for what's actually an emergent phenomenon of neurodiverse groups. See doi:10.1177/1362361320919286 "Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective", and follow up on any sentences that strike your fancy until you have an opinion.
Comments
Seems like an extension of the observation that very introverted people can unexpectedly flourish in acting professions: I think people who are socially awkward can have an easier time compartmentalizing their social anxieties when under a persona because there's a part of the brain that can say, "It's not me; I'm playing a role."
I suspect it's more that there is a script.
You don't have the "what am I supposed to say now??" panic, and you don't have to understand an unfamiliar social situation.
You arguably have a "script" in D&D, too, in the form of your character sheet. "I am a chaotic neutral dwarf. I will act aggressively towards elves.", etc. You are encouraged to act and speak as your character, not as yourself.
I think it is not really a "script"; it is a description of the character. This will affect as you will do in the game, and you will have to make it up what happens according to the circumstances as it is being done, instead of everything being written ahead of time. (Even if you do have plans, which you might (I often will, and the GM also often will), things will happen unexpectedly and cannot use the plans exactly like they are anyways.)
I think that you do not generally need game mechanical traits in your character sheet to do this; you can write it in a spare section if you want to do (it is useful to have spare sections for this and other purposes; I will often want to add many extra notes that there are not pre-defined sections for).
In GURPS, you would generally represent some of such things with mental disadvantages and quirks. I prefer to not use mental disadvantages unless I specifically want the game effects of those disadvantages (e.g. if you are unlucky, or cursed, or take only half as many turns as other characters, or you will tell the truth half of the time that you do not intend to do so, etc), and would generally rather have a choice, even if my character's personality is supposed to be something, I can do it by myself instead of making the game to try to do it for me. I do usually add quirks though, and I do more often want physical and social disadvantages.
That can be helpful, but it's far from the safety of a script, where every single word you say is given to you.
Introversion seems like it would be orthogonal to acting ability. Acting does need a very strong model of the 'other', though. An actor needs to be able to model how someone else might be feeling and more importantly, manifesting those feelings externally. So while an introvert might be a good actor someone on the autism spectrum might not be.
The idea that autistic people have poor "theory of mind" is a myth, with no supporting evidence. I'm sure Simon Baron–Cohen believed it, but all the experiments he ran to support it are flawed. Last I checked, he considers the theory discredited.
The true observation is more like “untrained people have a better intuition for the behaviour of people who think like them”. When the researchers are all allistic, and the experiments are all based on allistic psychology, the researchers find that autistic people “don't understand other people” – but that's experimental error.
I expect we'll be stuck with this ToM myth for a while, like we're stuck with Sigmund Freud's nonsense. (I mean, “Oedipus complex”, seriously? We have empirical evidence for the Westermarck effect!) But that doesn't make it true.
I don't think its controversial to say that autistic people often have difficulty recognizing the internal states of others.
It's not controversial. It is wrong (or, at least, misleading), since:
• Allistic people have difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people; and
• Autistic people have considerably less difficulty recognising the internal states of autistic people (even though there are fewer autistic people from which to learn that skill).
It's placing "blame" on autistic people for what's actually an emergent phenomenon of neurodiverse groups. See doi:10.1177/1362361320919286 "Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective", and follow up on any sentences that strike your fancy until you have an opinion.