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, especially in the French sociocultural context which is less familiar with the social model of disability developed in the anglophone world. As this model stresses that the majority largely shapes the social environment, finding ways to influence the general population’s attitudes toward autism is critical. Choral singing offers a promising medium to do so and 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 experiences 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 offer a promising double empathy solution, facilitating intergroup contact to reduce prejudice and thereby remove social barriers to the inclusion of autistic voices.