The Cue Is the Key

Abstract

In contrast to former tests, the Magdeburg Test of Social Intelligence measures social understanding with a scenario approach. Each scenario is based on one real target person and includes both social cues and contextual information about this person in different realistic situations. The subjects’ task is to understand the given social cues and to judge the target persons’ cognitions, emotions, and relationships to other people. However, subjects can potentially use only contextual information instead of social cues or base their judgments equally on both. The present study was aimed at examining the relative contribution of social cues and contextual information. In an experiment (N = 126), we manipulated the following conditions: Participants were given (a) only social cues, (b) only contextual information, or (c) both components. Results showed that social cues played a more important role in this social understanding task than the contextual information.