Hopebridge’s Lessons from ‘The Good Doctor:’ Social Cues

The Importance of Understanding Social Cues to the Autism Community

As an outsider, one of the most commonly known signs of autism is a difficulty connecting to others during conversation. It’s also one of the most misunderstood.

Some individuals with ASD have issues reading various situations, but it’s not necessarily because they don’t understand (or “lack”) emotions. They just may not pick up on body language or social cues in the same way neurotypicals view them. This can cause challenges at times – distinguishing sarcasm, for instance – but is it always a bad thing?

Spoiler alert: if you haven’t watched last week’s episode of
“The Good Doctor,” you may want to pause, go watch it, then come back to us!

In episode 13, the main character, Dr. Shaun Murphy, and his coworker, Dr. Claire Brown work with a patient whose background story does not line up with her symptoms.

“I’m not good at reading people. I think people-reading embraces personal biases. I think we should try to avoid biases.”

To which Claire responds, explaining:

“Knowledge of human behavior can help us make informed, intuitive decisions.”

That’s when Shaun fires back with an unexpected way to close the conversation, “My way is better. It’s based on actions.”
At the end of the episode, Shaun ends up being the one who is correct in not believing the patient’s story, even if his alternative theory is off base.

Though Shaun was right in this case, we still think both his statement and Claire’s can be true. Which method do you think is better… being able to use intuition or only allowing actions to support decisions? Let us know before diving into tonight’s episode, which we’ll be back to discuss next week!