Social camouflaging test

Social camouflaging is the set of strategies a person uses to hide what might look different about them in an interaction, and to appear at ease where they are not. This Brain Quiz questionnaire offers 24 items to place that adaptation effort on four axes, in about seven minutes. The score and its result band are displayed for free, with no account and no email address; the reading of the four axes comes with the subscription.

Where does the idea come from? It was first described from the accounts of autistic adults. In 2017, Laura Hull and colleagues published a study of 92 adults describing why they camouflage, how, and what it costs them: the paper's title borrows one participant's phrase, "putting on my best normal". The same year, Meng-Chuan Lai and colleagues proposed a first way of quantifying camouflaging, from the gap between what a person reports about themselves and what an observer notes. In 2019, Hull's team published the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire, a 25-item questionnaire organised into three factors: compensation, masking and assimilation. A systematic review of 29 studies, published in 2021 by Julia Cook and colleagues, takes stock of this work and its limits.

What does this questionnaire measure? Four axes of six items each. Masking covers what you hold back: monitoring your expression, forcing a smile or eye contact, hiding an interest. Compensation covers what you prepare: ready-made lines, rules learned by watching others, mental rehearsals. Assimilation covers the feeling of playing a part and the effort of going along with the group without standing out. Cost and recovery cover what that effort takes from you: the tiredness that follows, the quiet time needed, the invitations turned down in advance. The first three axes follow the three broad categories described in the literature; the fourth adds the question of cost, which runs through every study cited.

Is social camouflaging specific to autism? No. In the CAT-Q validation study, the 478 non-autistic adults also reported camouflaging behaviours, on average less than the 354 autistic adults. Many people adapt to a group, a job or a culture that is not their own, and most adults adjust how they come across depending on the context. This questionnaire observes the effort and its cost, it does not look for its cause. A high score may correspond to shyness, to social anxiety, to an unwelcoming environment or to traits frequently associated with autism: the questionnaire does not decide between these readings, and it can neither establish nor rule out a condition.

Why does the cost matter? In the 2017 study, participants describe exhaustion, anxiety and, for some, the feeling of no longer knowing who they are. In 2021, Hull and colleagues reported, among autistic adults, an association between camouflaging and higher anxiety and depression scores, with no difference by gender. That is the reason for the cost and recovery axis: it says whether the effort remains sustainable, and it is the one to look at first.

How is the score calculated? Each answer is worth 0 to 4 points, multiplied by the weight of the question, between 1 and 3. The four axes carry the same total weight, and the overall score is rescaled to 100. It reads as an index of social adaptation effort. Four items, one per axis, are reverse-scored: reported ease lowers the score. Weights and band thresholds were set by the Brain Quiz editorial team. They come from no population calibration, and the methodology page says so in the same terms.

The items were written for Brain Quiz. No published scale is reproduced, in whole or in part: no CAT-Q item is used, and its reuse conditions have not been established. The references cited document the field explored, not the source of the items.

What to do with the result? It gives a dated reference point: these tendencies vary with the environment, the period and the people around you, and retaking the questionnaire a few months later, after a change of job or circle, says more than a single score. If the effort described weighs on your daily life, your sleep or your relationships, talking to a psychologist or another health professional is a reasonable step, and this questionnaire can serve as a starting point for that conversation.