This article presents a competence-oriented experiment on the comprehension of ideas in modern literature. Comprehension is defined as being indicative of competence as distinct from qualification. 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium participated in a course on modem literature and society. In the process of testing, the students were at two occasions exposed to three videotaped projections of model societies. In this connection they responded to 15 propositional statements on the quality of life in the projected societies. The instrument measures competence of civilisation by two factors, (Fl) Eigenvalue and (FIl) visibility of social texture. The model societies represent three dimensions of ideas connected to three scientific paradigms, namely affinit y, structure, and process. These dimensions were related and discussed in correspondence with the literary and cultural concepts ofbehaviourism, structuralism, and functionalism. Before the participants' seeond exposure to the videos they were given a recognition test in which they were asked to react to 15 items each one describing an idea in function. According to the analysis of variance there is a significant difference in degree of difficulty in the ideas but no difference at all between the classes. The degrees of difficulty have been used to establish a super-ordinal evolutionary scale, which measures comprehension of ideas linked to the culturaI dimensions of society. The values on the competence factors (Fl,FIl) were filtered through the values on the literary scale. Thereby those dimensions of the model societies that describe degrees of competence needs became apparent. Thus, it has been shown that literature is a necessary instrument for perceiving the disparity of a society and for developing competence, provided that its basic idea is transparent.