Published on 19 May 2025 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge
Why do teams of intelligent people keep making predictable mistakes?
Risks are underestimated.
Projects continue long after the evidence says they should stop.
Decisions shift simply because information is framed differently.
Psychologists have spent decades studying these patterns. They’re known as cognitive biases, and they affect nearly all human decision-making.
But interestingly, research shows that some people are less vulnerable to these distortions than others.
Autistic thinkers, in particular, often show a striking resistance to several well-known cognitive biases. Their focus on underlying facts, rather than social or emotional context, can lead to more consistent and rational decisions.
Autistic people have a reputation for being logical, consistent, and fair, and these characteristics are supported by the research literature. I've previously explored how autistic thinkers excel at rational decision-making, because their focus is resistant to irrelevant distractions, and they are less susceptible to cognitive biases such the Sunk Cost Fallacy and the Framing Effect. You can read that piece here, but to summarize:
The Sunk Cost Fallacy describes our tendency to keep investing in a losing proposition just because we’ve already spent time or resources on it. Autistic people are less attached to these earlier investments; they are better able to cut their losses and move on.
The Framing Effect shows how the way information is presented influences our decisions. Most people prefer to keep $30 of $50, instead of to lose $20 of $50; you only see the logical 50:50 split between these options with autistic thinkers who tend to evaluate the core facts, not their emotional or stylistic packaging.
These examples illustrate that autistic people tend to be less swayed by irrelevant context, emotional cues, or social expectations. Psychologists have found that autistic thinkers are particularly well suited to decisions that require logic, structure, and fairness, and that makes them a natural fit for the kind of complex, rule-based work that is critical in technology. This isn’t the only reason autistic people are a natural fit for roles in technology, but it’s one of them, and it helps explain why we see such a concentration of autistic professionals in places like Silicon Valley (you can read more about that here).
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky famously showed that people rely on mental shortcuts — heuristics — to make decisions due to the amount of information involved. These approximations usually work well, but there are situations — well explored by psychologists — where they can lead us astray, causing us to overlook risks, misjudge value, or let emotion override reason.
Evolution has ensured that among the range of brain types in our species, some are better equipped to resist these cognitive traps and in situations where you need decisions with minimal approximation — where you want clarity without distortion — autistic thinkers often excel.
Research in psychology shows that autistic thinkers are often less influenced by several well-known cognitive biases. Below are three examples that illustrate how this difference can influence real-world decisions.
If your organization relies on high-quality decision-making, especially in tech or data-driven environments, it is worth exploring how to design your team culture so that it is welcoming and enabling of talent with an autistic thinking style.
Autistic resistance to the Attraction (or Decoy) Effect
Most people are inconsistent in how they make decisions, especially when irrelevant comparisons, such as those relating to personal or social situations, are introduced. For example:
You’re offered two sizes of coffee:
Small: $4.50
Large: $7.00
You choose the small one — it’s cheaper, healthier, better value.
Now a third option is introduced:
Medium: $6.00
Almost no one buys the medium, but that's not its purpose. It is there to act as a decoy. It makes the large look like a better deal. Suddenly, most people shift their choice to the large coffee — even though nothing about their actual needs or preferences has changed.
This is called the Attraction Effect, or Decoy Effect, and autistic people are more resistant to it. They’re more likely to stick to their original, rational choice.
Autistic resistance to Optimism Bias
Do your teams consistently underestimate how long things will take, or how much they’ll cost? You’re not alone — and it may not be a skills issue. It’s often due to Optimism Bias.
Optimism Bias makes people believe that positive outcomes are more likely than negative ones. They’re more inclined to update their views when new information is encouraging, and ignore it when it’s not.
This often results in:
Underestimated timelines.
Insufficient risk mitigation.
Overconfidence in project outcomes.
Research shows that autistic individuals show lower susceptibility to this bias. That doesn’t mean you should require everyone in charge of risk registers to be autistic — but it does mean that organizations benefit when they intentionally include a mix of thinking styles. By welcoming diverse cognitive styles — including those commonly found in autistic thinkers — you’ll enhance your team’s objectivity and improve decision making.
Autistic resistance to emotion-driven irrationality: The Ultimatum Game
Let's play a game. I'm going to offer you a share of $100. But there’s a catch. I set the terms, but you don't know them up front. If you decide to accept, we split the money as I suggest. If you decide to refuse, neither of us gets anything.
Now imagine I offer you $18 of that $100.
Would you take it?
Most people wouldn’t. It feels unfair — and they’d rather lose the $18 than reward the injustice.
This is irrational. You’re rejecting free money based on emotion. $18 is more than you started with—my personal outcome of $82 doesn’t impact the fact that you’ve just received money for nothing. But most people decide to refuse so neither of us receives anything.
Autistic people, by contrast, are more likely to accept the offer. They tend to evaluate the outcome rationally: any share of $18 is better than $0. This isn’t about lacking emotion—it’s about resisting emotional interference when making decisions.
The bigger picture
Of course, individuals vary — but research shows autistic thinkers tend to have a unique edge in resisting some of the most common cognitive traps that skew decision-making.
That doesn’t mean you need to single someone out who is autistic to handle all your tough decisions. It means building a workplace where autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people can contribute fully — without needing to justify or explain the way their minds work.
Think about the last time someone questioned an optimistic deadline or challenged a popular proposal in your team. Did their reasoning influence the decision, or did the conversation move on without addressing it?
Before your next important decision, try asking everyone to write down one assumption worth testing and one piece of evidence that would change their view. Discuss these before settling on a preferred option. This creates an explicit opportunity for different perspectives to inform the decision.
When you design your working culture to welcome and enable a mixture of different cognitive styles, everyone benefits. Decision quality improves. So does trust, inclusion, resilience, and a wide range of other outcomes, both personal and business.
In our increasingly technologically-driven world that rewards clarity, logic, and system-level thinking, especially given the shortage of AI-literate talent that is commonly reported, these aren’t just soft skills. They’re strategic ones.
The opportunity is to build a team where people with different ways of thinking can influence what happens next. Who gets heard, how evidence is weighed, and whether people can challenge a preferred course all deserve deliberate attention.
Is your team making full use of its different ways of thinking?
If risks are raised but brushed aside, the same voices dominate decisions, or projects continue despite mounting doubts, it may be time to examine how decisions get made.
I help leaders in knowledge-intensive organizations design the working practices that connect different perspectives into collective capability – including how teams question assumptions, work through disagreement, and decide when to change course.
