Study Finds Surprising Double Role For Trait Driving Anxiety In Autism

Why Putting Feelings Into Words Is So Hard for Autistic People, and Why It Matters More Than Ever

A new study suggests that a factor linked to anxiety in people with autism-related traits may also be nudging them toward a coping strategy that could help ease it. Whether that strategy actually helps depends heavily on whether a person can pull it off.

Scientists have long known that many autistic individuals struggle with what researchers call “intolerance of uncertainty,” a deep discomfort with not knowing what comes next. That trait is strongly linked to anxiety. A study published in Scientific Reports points to a surprising twist. That same discomfort may also push people toward a coping behavior associated with lower anxiety. Prior research suggests many autistic people, and people with higher autism-related traits, may find that kind of emotion-naming genuinely difficult.

Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan surveyed 505 adults from the general population and found that autism-related traits are linked to anxiety through a chain of mental processes. Within that chain, they identified an “adaptive pathway”: a route by which the very discomfort that fuels anxiety may also motivate people to put their feelings into words, an act the data suggested was associated with lower anxiety.

Naming Your Feelings Linked to Lower Anxiety

At the center of this study is affect labeling, the simple act of putting feelings into words. Saying “I feel nervous” or “I’m frustrated right now” counts. Prior research has shown this can calm the brain’s alarm center, reduce physical stress responses, and help people face situations they might otherwise avoid.

For many people, this can feel relatively manageable. But for others, including many autistic people, identifying and describing emotions can be genuinely hard. This difficulty is often tied to alexithymia, a condition that commonly co-occurs with autism, in which recognizing and naming one’s internal feelings is difficult. So here lies the puzzle this study set out to untangle: if naming feelings can reduce anxiety, but anxiety in people with autism-related traits is driven by an intense need for certainty, and naming feelings is hard for many of them, what actually happens?

Researchers Akitaka Fujii and Masahiro Hirai proposed that intolerance of uncertainty might do double duty. Yes, it fuels anxiety. But it may also push people to resolve the ambiguity of their own emotional states, motivating an attempt to label feelings even when that is hard.

Higher Autism-Related Traits, Higher Discomfort with Uncertainty

To test this, Fujii and Hirai recruited 532 adults between the ages of 20 and 39 from a general population research panel in Japan. After filtering out participants who appeared to answer carelessly, the final sample came to 505 adults split evenly between men and women.

Each participant completed four questionnaires measuring autism-related traits, discomfort with uncertainty, how often they put feelings into words, and general anxiety levels. None were required to have an autism diagnosis. The study examined traits that exist on a spectrum across the general population.

Researchers then tested two competing theoretical models. One proposed that difficulty naming emotions leads to more uncertainty, then to more anxiety. The other proposed the reverse: intolerance of uncertainty comes first, then nudges people toward naming emotions as a coping move, which in turn was linked to lower anxiety. Both models fit the data equally well. Based on theoretical reasoning and prior research, the authors selected the second as the more logically consistent explanation.

Anxiety and Emotion-Naming Are Tangled in Both Directions

Within that model, the researchers confirmed what earlier studies had suggested: higher autism-related traits were linked to higher intolerance of uncertainty, and higher intolerance of uncertainty was linked to higher anxiety. What was new was an additional pattern: higher intolerance of uncertainty was also linked to greater use of emotion labeling, and greater emotion labeling was linked to lower anxiety.

None of this, though, is proof of cause and effect. Because the study captured a single snapshot in time rather than following people over months or years, it cannot confirm that uncertainty causes labeling or that labeling reduces anxiety. Both competing models fit the data equally well, which points to a possible loop where uncertainty motivates attempts to label feelings, yet because labeling is genuinely difficult for people with higher autism-related traits, the uncertainty may never fully resolve.

If Someone Struggles to Label Emotions, External Support May Matter

If intolerance of uncertainty can serve as a kind of internal motivation to name emotions, even among people who find that difficult, then approaches that help people develop emotion-labeling skills could be especially useful. Emotion-naming is already used in some educational and therapeutic programs for autistic people, but the idea that the very discomfort driving anxiety may also be pushing people toward this strategy has not been clearly framed before.

Limits apply. The study drew entirely from a non-clinical Japanese adult population aged 20 to 39, and cultural factors specific to Japan may have shaped the results. Unmeasured factors such as rumination or analytical thinking could also explain part of the pattern. Still, what emerges is a view of intolerance of uncertainty as more than a simple anxiety driver. In at least some people, the same discomfort with the unknown may be pointing them toward a strategy that could help.

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Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute medical or mental health advice. Anyone dealing with anxiety or related concerns should seek support from a qualified professional.

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