Abstract
The social challenges encountered by autistic people are increasingly understood as a double empathy problem: a mutual misunderstanding between autistic and non-autistic individuals, rather than an autistic deficit. This paradigm highlights a need for inclusive spaces that foster mutual understanding, yet this remains challenging. Choral singing offers a promising medium to facilitate cross-neurotype dynamics, as it is thought to have evolved as a biological mechanism to foster social bonding. Accordingly, this qualitative study explored how 12 general population choristers experienced a 6-month neurodiverse choir shared with 8 autistic adolescents and 3 autism specialists. We used a two-stage qualitative design, first capturing individual experience through an open-ended online questionnaire, and subsequently deepening our analysis through a discussion with a community stakeholder panel. The findings revealed an intrinsically demanding experience, especially emotionally and cognitively, counterbalanced by important benefits, as it was also described as joyful and powerful, encouraging personal growth among the choristers and a shift in their perceptions of autism. These findings support the neurodiversity paradigm and suggest that choral singing may be a powerful double empathy solution, facilitating intergroup contact to reduce prejudice and thereby enhance the participation of autistic voices.