Higher social intelligence can impair source memory.
Source monitoring is made difficult when the similarity between candidate sources increases. The current work examines how individual differences in social intelligence and perspective-taking abilities serve to increase source similarity and thus negatively impact source memory. Strangers first engaged in a cooperative storytelling task. On each trial, a single word was shown to both participants, but only 1 participant was designated to add a story sentence, using this assigned word. As predicted, social intelligence negatively predicted performance in a subsequent source-monitoring task. In a 2nd study, preventing participants from being able to anticipate their partner's next contribution to the story eliminated the effect.
Barber
Sarah J
SJ
Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, NY 11794-2500, USA. sarah.barber@sunysb.edu
Franklin
Nancy
N
Naka
Makiko
M
Yoshimura
Hiroki
H
D056348:Emotional Intelligence / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013334:Students; D014495:Universities; D014825:Vocabulary