People punish transgressors with different intensity depending if they are members of their group or not. We explore this in a cross-sectional analytical study with paired samples in children with developmental disorders who watched two videos and expressed their opinion. In Video-1, a football-player from the participant’s country scores a goal with his hand. In Video-2, a player from another country does the same against the country of the participant. Each subject watched the two videos and their answers were compared. The autism spectrum disorder (ASD) group showed negative feelings in Video 1 (M = − .1; CI 95% − .51 to .31); and in Video 2 (M = − .43; CI 95% .77 to − .09; t(8) = 1.64, p = .13), but the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities, intellectual disability groups showed positive opinion in Video-1 and negative in Video-2. This suggests that children with ASD respect rules regardless of whether those who break them belong or not to their own group, possibly due to lower degrees of empathy.
