Is Asperger's just cold climate personality type?

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It seems to me like cold climates favor different cognitive abilities for survival and that Asperger's traits may simply be a result of this adaptation. Aspies are more focused (able to work constantly to survive in a brutal climate), less emotional and more rational (better able to handle the stress of a cold climate, able to make tough decisions, possibly brighter, less compassion for lazy, stupid people), less talkative and social (warmer climates may favor entertaining, uninhibited, and outgoing people whereas cold climates favor a focused mentality), rigid, need to stick to routine (again if you are going to survive in freezing cold weather then you need have everything a certain way, in its proper order, otherwise you freeze to death in your poorly built home, etc...), exceptional memory (again certain cognitive functions necessary for survival or more important in a tough climate).

If you had to survive in Siberia or somewhere with a very harsh climate there is less room for small talk and more constant work. It is only in the context of modern civilization that these traits seem odd. In some other time it would have been the overly social, unfocused, too funny, etc people who would have been the crazy ones. Many aspies are also sensitive to sunlight (generally it is cloudy in cold environments), they are sensitive to touch (they like to have clothes on their body, again: cold climate).

I have been thinking on this in a more general sense.

Are there any social or biological advantages to autism? Regardless of it being social or genetic, a purely defective trait would surely be extinct, or at least much more rare either for reasons of social stigma/penalty or simple attrition.

Your post might go some way to explaining it. We know that part of the definition for a mental illness is how it impacts a person's ability to navigate the world and society. In some times/places autism could be a good trait. (Sadly, that does not apply to here and now....)

That is an interesting observation. I know an Aspie might not do well in the Sahara for example, due to many having hypersensitivity to light. Personally I am extremely fond of cold as well. But I do not think it is so much an adaption - I grew up in a desert. Also, if you apply this to the ice age, then by survival of the fittest, Aspergians would be the humans much more dominant "species"

To play devil's advocate, people are still born blind, deaf, mentally ret*d, etc. You may not see them on a daily basis, but a good number of them exist if you go by social services that cater to them.

Unfavorable traits might disappear is a species as a whole (or the species may die out). But any individual organism, regardless of how complex a biology, runs the risk of having some sort of defect.

For every X amount of cars produced, a small amount will always be lemons, regardless of how advanced the production line is. The same is true with organic life.

Not to sound grim, just saying, whenever something is produced in mass (objects or organisms) a certain percentage of them will be defective in some manner.

That's interesting, I can relate somewhat. During quit a harsh winter, heating severly restricted and deadlines to keep with studies. I was able to deep focus to a point with a task that the feeling of being cold was completly absent until the task at hand was complete, that was when the indoor thermo was at 12C.

I was born and raised in Alabama and still live there. It gets up in the low 100's in the summer with high humidity. I'm just fine with that and have no problem with it. When it gets below 50 outside I try not to go out. I hate the cold. I would rather live on the equator than in Wisconsin.

Hot weather feels natural to me. It gets hot here around April and stays hot until sometime in October. We don't really have seasons like the rest of the country. Spring and fall last about two weeks. Winter doesn't get cold until about January or February and it stays that way maybe a month or two. We have warm spells during the winter though, where it gets up to 50 or 60 and I enjoy those, but when it's cold here I can barely deal with it, so if I were to be somewhere that gets REALLY cold, no way.

I take offense to the OP comment. Makes it sound a bit like southerners are inferior. But to answer his question, both me and my husband seem to be aspies according to the test. I am at least 6th generation Texan, and he's got a branch who has lived here for several generations as well.

I would call myself pretty sensitive to light. I have to wear a hat with a visor whenever I'm outside, even if it's just for a minute or two. But that's something recent. I don't recall having this need up until a few years ago. 

The hyper focus can be a killer though. My husband works outside a lot and I have to get onto him and make him drink water or take breaks. Working in constant heat makes him sick. One time he even had to be taken to the ER! Me, on the other hand, I am more built for the weather, and have spent several hours willingly in triple digit heat, and would rather expose myself with the top down on my car, rather than top up w/ AC. That's not to say that I don't think it's freaking hot. I just rather it be 100 than 60

Exceptional memory is benificial anywhere I think. It's good for navigation, but can get you into trouble when roads change and businesses close.

As for warmer climates favoring entertaining... ...I've never understood this. People complain how hot it is, then create these elaborate outdoor patio/grill areas, which is basiclly considered another room, since it's an add on to the house. And then they sit around talking next to a fire pit. A FIRE PIT!! ! It's 110 outside, you complain how hot it is, and yet do this? <roll eyes> ...NTs... ...am I right? I guess they need it to be that hot. Gives them something to talk about.

I don't think AS is just cold type personality, but aspies might thrive better in colder climates, which might explain why Scandinavia is so aspiesh.

Interesting theory.

But I prefer summer.

In my nocturnal way.

It is quite an interesting theory. I've often wondered why so many Scots have become inventors and masterful engineers. I'm not suggesting that all people with Aspergers are good at that sort of thing (and many would claim the opposite is true for them). But a fair proportion of people who tinker and come up with new ideas that change the world do have ASDs or significant traits. Many of them, especially in the past, have been Scots.

Perhaps we have a higher percentage of ASDs than warmer climates. From my time spent on here, I think we do have a higher incidence (or diagnostic rate) than most other areas. My daughter has 2 friends with Aspergers, whom she has met through ordinary means (not through autism meet-ups or classes, because we've never been to any of those). There are 2 kids with ASDs in my daughter's class of 31, one undergoing assessment and another has left to go to an autism unit. This is an ordinary primary school, which doesn't have a special needs base. These kids haven't been deliberately put together in this class, because some of them were not identified until they started school. And the school is not doing the identifying either. They are neither particularly adept at identifying kids with ASDs nor are they over zealous in picking kids out for assessment. It's the parents raising their concerns, in most cases. The other 2 classes no doubt have similar numbers of kids with diagnoses or question marks. It has just happened this way, so it seems a pretty high percentage.

This is a cool/moderate climate and summer days rarely reach 20C (although this weekend is an exception).

l don't think the way we adapt to the cold is very closely related to our DNA or intelligence. lt's just an instinct. You would have to be as dumb as bricks not to adapt, and those folks were being weeded out for other reasons.

People who evolve in cold climates do develop certain advantages but when you put say, African folks in the same weather they begin to behave the same way.

People who evolved in Africa also faced an inhospitable environment. Food shortage and drought were often an issue, they evolved to be able to travel long distances by foot to find food and water and lolly gagging would not have been tolerated in this case, either.


You also see the polar opposite types you described in the same people depending on the season.
Very non-Aspie NTs adapt in winter and survive. Most people l know become very serious and focused in winter, friendly again in warm weather. l probably become the angriest in the cold out of anyone l know lol.

So as far as selective breeding is concerned, even if those who adapted well were favored, many of them would still be NTs who had the ability to regain their social skills when the winter was over.

One thing that is important though is that many of the less skilled types would just herd together and the smarter people who could guarantee safety would be their leader. Those types may have had more Aspie traits than the others, they would have been favored if they could build efficient houses and make the most efficient plans for hunting, etc.

But again, the most efficient people would have been prized in any culture and environment, really, but certainly in both extremes like the desert and extreme cold.

And by and large the people following them could adapt either way. You didn't say that everyone who lived in those climates would have had AS anyway, though.

Last edited by EXPECIALLY on 10 Aug 2012, 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think we're that specifically - as far as I know there isn't evidence AS is more common in people whose ancestors lived in those regions (what I usually hear is that people with European ancestry are more likely to be diagnosed for other reasons, although I don't know what that idea is based on).
I have thought that there were some reasons having at least one aspie in a tribe might have been beneficial for the whole group's survival, though, while having too many would not be. For inventing new tools, for instance, and putting in the type of focused, slow work needed to produce them. Tracking and seeing the patterns in nature that would improve the group's chances. Things like that - you don't need everyone to do it, but you need someone who can, and at the same time having too many people too narrowly focused would prevent the kind of cooperation needed to keep the "tribe" together. Just random thoughts, though.

EDIT: Yeah, looking at the stats ethnicity doesn't seem to be a big factor.

Interesting theory although I have to admit I doubt it. Still, I was born and partially raised in an area in Canada well known for BRUTAL weather. Summers are not warm (last year it stayed below 12C for two full weeks while I was there. In August). Winds are high, rain is frequent and while it didn't get too cold the snow is out of this world. In short, you have to be tough to stomach its climate.

Western shrinks were amazed at how "emotionally repressed" Cree Indians of the sub arctic Canadians woods are. Verbal silence is considered a virtue in children, and not a disease, in their culture. Thats what I read in an anthropology text. So the Cree seemed to be very aspergian in thier culture. And they are boreal in habitat.

Likewise North European culture is more repressed and less expressive than mediterranean Europe.

So living away from the equator does correlate with some aspergain culture traits in a vague way.

But the OP is going way overboard.
"Stupidity" will kill you just as fast, if not faster, in the tropics than in the temperate zone. And aspies are atleast as prone to stupidity as anyone else if not more so. And aspies get punish for folly atleast as severely as nt's do if not more so. So the op is going way off the deep end.

I doubt that climate has anything to do with it. From an evolutionary standpoint, however, Aspergers is definitely an anomaly. The behaviorial traits in Aspies could be an evolutionary reaction to resist conforming to increasingly homogeneous social standards. Evolution works best with maximum diversity, because then traits that are beneficial to survival have a greater chance of being passed on. Since normal human society values conformity, diversity becomes less and less conducive to evolutionary progress. Anomalies like us are ostracized and shunned. However, should the trend continue, humanity as a whole will soon face an existential crisis, and will be forced to rely on these anomalies to further the species or else risk extinction.

No, because Aspergers isn't a "personality type" at all.