Discriminative Facility and Its Role in the Perceived Quality of Interactional Experiences

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 discrim inative facility is an aspect of social intelligence.

Abstract

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.