We share Jaswal & Akhtar's concerns about the unintended repercussions of assumed social disinterest in autism. We expand consideration of these consequences with discussion of the literature and our own work on loneliness, mental ill-health, and self-representation, which is a cornerstone to social and emotional health. Further study is needed with expansive, mixed methodologies and involvement of the autistic community.

Stepping away from a normocentric understanding of autism goes beyond questioning the supposed lack of social motivation of autistic people. It evokes subversion of the prevalence of intellectual disability even in non-verbal autism. It also challenges the perceived purposelessness of some restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, and instead interprets them as legitimate exploratory and learning-associated manifestations.

The stereotype of people with autism as unresponsive or uninterested in other people was prominent in the 1980s. However, this view of autism has steadily given way to recognition of important individual differences in the social-emotional development of affected people and a more precise understanding of the possible role social motivation has in their early development.

In light of Jaswal & Akhtar's compelling argument, we argue there should instead be more focus on deficits in socio-emotional abilities. However, current research is limited by the psychometric problems with most measures. We discuss specific problems, outlining examples for theory of mind. We conclude with recommendations for new lines of research derived from findings in the individual differences literature.

We provide support from attachment research to the argument that children with autism only appear to lack social motivation. This research has shown that the attachment system of children with autism is intact, and one-half form secure attachments. This is illustrated with an observation of a young child with autism during a separation and reunion observation with his mother.

Autism often co-occurs with alexithymia, a condition characterized by no or diminished awareness of emotions that significantly impacts an individual's social relationships. We investigate how the social motivation of autistics would be eroded by comorbidity with alexithymia and why this diminished motivation would be difficult for non-autistic people to perceive and reciprocate.

Jaswal & Akhtar challenge the notion that autistic people have diminished social motivation, prompted in part by a desire to take autistic testimony seriously. We applaud their analysis and go further to suggest that future research could be enhanced by involving autistic people directly in the research process.

Many autistic behaviours can rightly be classified as adaptive, but why these behaviours differ from adaptive neurotypical behaviours in the same environment requires explanation. I argue that predictive processing accounts best explain why autistic people engage different adaptive responses to the environment and, further, account for evidence left unexplained by the social motivation theory.

Jaswal & Akhtar in their target article convincingly argue that subjects with autism do not have diminished social motivation. However, they still recognize that autistic people behave socially in an unusual way. Why? Here we suggest that these behaviours are the results of a multisensory integration deficit. Viewed from this perspective, the assumption that autistic people's unusual behaviours indicate diminished social motivation has to be replaced by the one that they have diminished social prediction skills.

Speaking as an anthropologist, I comment on three striking features of Jaswal & Akhtar's argument. I suggest that the boldness of their intervention lies in its modesty. In challenging a parsimonious explanation for autistic behavior, they invite a conversation including scholars from other disciplines, as well as autistic people themselves.

Research that engages the experiences and insights of autistics and their caregivers can be more ethical, less stigmatizing, and innovative. To avoid reproducing established assumptions, researchers should learn how autistics and their caregivers understand behavioral and communicative differences, and how they prioritize interventions and accommodations. Fostering “autistic flourishing” requires that researchers focus on similarities between autistics and neurotypical people while allowing for autistic differences. Consulting autistics helps ensure that their personhood is acknowledged.

The arguments offered by Jaswal & Akhtar to counter the social motivation theory (SMT) do not appear to be directly related to the SMT tenets and predictions, seem to not be empirically testable, and are inconsistent with empirical evidence. To evaluate the merits and shortcomings of the SMT and identify scientifically testable alternatives, advances are needed on the conceptualization and operationalization of social motivation across diagnostic boundaries.

Jaswal & Akhtar provide several quotes ostensibly from people with autism but obtained via the discredited techniques of Facilitated Communication and the Rapid Prompting Method, and they do not acknowledge the use of these techniques. As a result, their argument is substantially less convincing than they assert, and the article lacks transparency.

The self-report of some autistic individuals that they experience social motivation should not be interpreted as a refutation of neuroimaging evidence supporting the social motivation hypothesis of autism. Neuroimaging evidence supports subtle differences in unconscious reward processing, which emerge at the group level and which may not be perceptible to individuals, but which may nonetheless impact an individual's behavior.

In response to the 32 commentaries, we clarify and extend two of the central arguments in our target article: (1) Social motivation is a dynamic, emergent process, not a static characteristic of individuals, and (2) autistic perspectives are essential to the study of autistic social motivation. We elaborate on how taking these two arguments seriously can contribute to a more accurate, humane, and useful science of autism.

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of strategy and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste.

De Dreu and Gross's distinction between attack and defense is complicated in real-world conflicts because competing leaders construe their position as one of defense, and power imbalances place status quo challengers in a defensive position. Their account of defense as vigilant avoidance is incomplete because it avoids a reference to anger which transforms anxious avoidance into collective and unified action.

Evolutionary theory makes further predictions about conflict. It predicts sex differences in the proclivity to attack and defend. It further suggests complementary biases in what we expect of the sexes. Finally, it suggests that the forms of human facial expressions of anger and happiness may have coevolved with the regularity of conflict as a means of signaling, bluffing, and defusing attack.

De Dreu and Gross predict that attackers will have more difficulty winning conflicts than defenders. As their analysis is presumed to capture the dynamics of decentralized conflict, we consider how their framework compares with ethnographic evidence from small-scale societies, as well as chimpanzee patterns of intergroup conflict. In these contexts, attackers have significantly more success in conflict than predicted by De Dreu and Gross's model. We discuss the possible reasons for this disparity.

The distinction between attackers and defenders might help refine the understanding of the role of emotions in conflicts. Here, we briefly discuss differences between attackers and defenders in terms of appraisals, action tendencies, emotional preferences, and brain activities. Finally, we outline how attackers and defenders may differ in their response to emotion-based interventions that aim to promote conflict resolution.