Social ecology of supervised communal facilities for mentally disabled adults: III. Predictors of social choice.

This paper is the third in a series in which the social behavior of mentally disabled clients in community facilities was examined. In this report, social choice for various cognitive and physical characteristics and for exposure to others was investigated in five settings. Preferences were inferred from observed affiliation, self reports, and staff judgments. Clients tended to prefer peers whom they had more exposure to, same-sex peers, and peers of similar attractiveness. Opposite-sex relationships were also common and were strongaer for women. Neither similarity nor complementarity choice was obtained for age of the desire for affiliation; however, retarded clients tended to be segregated from mentally ill clients. Although clients tended to name friends of similar intellects, a form of "limited complementarity" appeard to govern observed affiliation preferences in the clients preferred to affiliate with peers who were somewhat different in IQ. This result suggests that clients of relatively moderate intelligence are critical to the social integration of a setting, since they are most likely to form relationship with clients of both higher and lower intelligence. The implications of these results for the sociability of a setting were discussed.