Discriminative facility and its role in the perceived quality of interactional experiences.
Discriminative facility refers to an individual's sensitivity to subtle cues about the psychological meaning of a situation. This research aimed at examining (a) the conceptual distinctiveness of discriminative facility, (b) the situation-appropriate aspect of this construct, and (c) the relationship between discriminative facility and interpersonal experiences. Discriminative facility was assessed by a new measure of situation-appropriate behaviors across a variety of novel stressful situations. Results from study 1 showed that discriminative facility had weak positive relationships with cognitive complexity and nonsignificant relationships with self-monitoring and social desirability, indicating that discriminative facility is a unique construct. Results from Study 2 revealed that higher levels of discriminative facility were associated with higher levels of perceived social support and a greater number of pleasant interpersonal events experienced, thus providing support for the theoretical proposition that discriminative facility is an aspect of social intelligence.
Cheng
C
C
Division of Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon. soccheng@ust.hk
Chiu
C Y
CY
Hong
Y Y
YY
Cheung
J S
JS
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003071:Cognition; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D012928:Social Desirability; D012938:Social Perception; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires