Discriminative Facility in Social Competence: Conditional Versus Dispositional Encoding and Monitoring-Blunting of Information

Discriminative facility is conceptualized as an aspect of social intelligence and information processing that refers to sensitivity to subtle cues about the psychological meaning of the situation (e.g., about the expectations and motivations of the people in it and the scripts required). Two studies explored the relationship between discriminative facility and social competence, measured by the quality of social interaction. Study 1 assessed individual differences in discriminative facility in the encoding of social information, and Study 2 investigated the individual's discriminative use of a monitoring versus blunting coping strategy in dealing with different types of threatening situations that varied in the utility (instrumental value) of monitoring for threatening information. Discriminativeness both in encoding and in the use of monitoring-blunting strategies significantly predicted the quality of the individual's social interactions. The results supported the theoretical and heuristic utility of the construct of discriminative facility as an aspect of social competence and social intelligence.