“Puzzling, Yet So Refreshing”: Experiencing the Value of Neurodiversity Within an Inclusive Choir
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. It is thus critical to cultivate inclusive spaces that foster mutual understanding, where autistic people can fit in while allowing the general population to experience high-quality neurodiverse contacts. Choral singing offers a promising medium to do so and 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 adult 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 a thematic analysis of an open-ended online questionnaire, and subsequently deepening our results 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 support double empathy experiences, facilitating intergroup contact in the social majority, to reduce prejudice and thereby remove social barriers to the inclusion of autistic voices.
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BibTeX
@misc{petit2026puzzling,
title = {{“Puzzling, Yet So Refreshing”: Experiencing the Value of Neurodiversity Within an Inclusive Choir}},
author = {Nicolas Petit and Géraldine Dessertenne and Fanny Aprile and Lucie Jurek},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/3w7vh_v4},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3w7vh_v4/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - “Puzzling, Yet So Refreshing”: Experiencing the Value of Neurodiversity Within an Inclusive Choir
AU - Nicolas Petit
AU - Géraldine Dessertenne
AU - Fanny Aprile
AU - Lucie Jurek
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/3w7vh_v4
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3w7vh_v4/
AB - 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. It is thus critical to cultivate inclusive spaces that foster mutual understanding, where autistic people can fit in while allowing the general population to experience high-quality neurodiverse contacts. Choral singing offers a promising medium to do so and 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 adult 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 a thematic analysis of an open-ended online questionnaire, and subsequently deepening our results 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 support double empathy experiences, facilitating intergroup contact in the social majority, to reduce prejudice and thereby remove social barriers to the inclusion of autistic voices.
ER -