A closer look at interpersonal decision-making in adults with and without mental retardation

Two experiments were conducted to examine the interpersonal decision-making performance of women and men with and without mental retardation. In Experiment 1, adults with mental retardation listened to either short or long vignettes depicting situations in which a female or male protagonist was faced with a decision involving either a peer or authority figure. In Experiment 2, adults without mental retardation were presented with long versions of the vignettes. As expected, the task was considerably more difficult for the participants with mental retardation, possibly because of differences in their ability to fully comprehend the social situations. Women in both studies outperformed men. Results suggest that emotional and motivational factors may have contributed to these differences.