Supplementary Material
for Schlegel, Grandjean, & Scherer: Constructs of social and emotional effectiveness:
Different labels, same content?
Description of instruments used in the study
Self-report questionnaires
Social Skills Inventory
The Social Skills Inventory (SSI, Riggio, 1986) is a widely used 90-item self-report
questionnaire designed to measure the possession of basic emotional and social
communication skills. It consists of six subscales, namely emotional expressivity (e.g., “When
I get depressed, I tend to bring down those around me”), emotional sensitivity (“It’s nearly
impossible for people to hide their true feelings from me”), emotional control (“I am able to
conceal my true feelings from just about everyone”), social expressivity (“When in
discussions, I find myself doing a large share of the talking”), social sensitivity (“I often
worry that people will misinterpret something that I have said to them”), and social control (“I
find it very easy to play different roles at different times”). Participants respond on a fivepoint scale from “not at all like me” to “exactly like me”. The scores of these subscales can be
summed to obtain a global index of one’s social skills. The SSI showed satisfactory to good
reliability in adult and college samples. Furthermore, concurrent validity was demonstrated
with respect to constructs like empathy, self-esteem, nonverbal sending ability, and nonverbal
sensitivity. In the present study, the French version of the SSI (D’Ambrosio, provided by
Mindgarden, Inc.) was used.
Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire
The Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire (ICQ, Buhrmester, Furman, Wittenberg, &
Reis, 1988) is a 40-item self-report measure in which participants are asked to rate their
ability to handle a variety of interpersonal tasks on a five-point scale ranging from “I’m poor
at this; I’d feel uncomfortable and unable to handle this situation, I’d avoid it if possible” to
“I’m extremely good at this; I’d feel very comfortable and could handle this situation very
well”. It covers five different social competence domains: Initiating relationships (“suggesting
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things to do with new people whom you find interesting”), personal disclosure (“confiding in
a friend, letting him see your softer side”), negative assertion (“telling someone you don’t like
a certain way he has been treating you”), emotional support (“being a good and sensitive
listener for a companion who is upset”), and conflict management (“being able to admit that
you might be wrong when a disagreement build into a serious fight”). In a series of studies,
the authors showed that the ICQ is reliable, has a sound internal structure, and correlates
sensibly with other theoretically related variables as well as with peer rated social
competencies (Buhrmester et al., 1998). For the purpose of the present study, the ICQ was
translated into French using the translation-back-translation procedure (see Behling & Law,
2000).
Interpersonal Reactivity Index
The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1983), a 28-item self-report instrument, was
designed to measure cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy. There are four subscales:
perspective-taking (e.g., “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before making a
decision”), empathic concern (e.g., “I often have tender concerned feelings for people less
fortunate than me”), and personal distress in response to stressful situations (e.g., “Being in a
tense emotional situation scares me”) were used. Items were rated on a 5-point scale (1 = “not
true about me” to 5 = “extremely true about me”). Although the IRI has been widely used, the
postulated four-factor structure could not always be replicated and the reliability was only
modest in many studies (Paulus, 2009). Paulus (2009) therefore developed an abbreviated 16item version of the IRI, which showed more satisfactory psychometric properties and allows
to calculate a total empathy score. This version was adapted into French based on the French
translation of the original instrument by Guttman and Laporte (2000).
Political Skill Inventory
The Political Skill Inventory (PSI, Ferris et al., 2005) measures political skill which is defined
as “the ability to effectively understand others at work, and use such knowledge to influence
others to act in ways that enhance one’s personal and/or organizational objectives. It consists
of four dimensions, namely social astuteness (“I have a good intuition about how to present
myself to others”), interpersonal influence (“I am able to communicate easily and effectively
with others”), networking ability (“I spend a lot of time and effort at work networking with
others”), and apparent sincerity (“I try to show a genuine interest in other people”).
Participants indicate their agreement to the statements on a seven-point Likert scale. Several
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studies have provided support for the reliability, factorial validity and the construct validity of
the PSI with respect to subordinate, supervisor, and peer reports as well as various careerrelated outcomes. The questionnaire was translated into French using the translation-backtranslation procedure.
Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire
The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQUE; Petrides & Furnham, 2003)
measures four broad dimensions of trait EI, namely, well-being, self-control, emotionality,
and sociability. These dimensions are composed of the following 15 facets: Adaptability,
assertiveness, emotion perception (self and others), emotion expression, emotion
management (others), emotion regulation, impulsiveness, relationships, self-esteem, selfmotivation, social awareness, stress management, trait empathy, trait happiness, trait
optimism. Here, we used the full 153 item version of the TEIQUE in the French version
developed and validated by Mikolajczak, Luminet, Leroy, and Roy (2007). Participants are
asked to state their agreement with each item on a seven-point Likert scale from “completely
disagree” to “completely agree”.
Performance-based tests
Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test
The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT, Mayer, Salovey, Caruso,
& Sitarenios, 2003) is based on the ability model of emotional intelligence (Mayer & Salovey,
1997). The 141 Items are grouped into eight tasks (e.g., Faces, Pictures), with four branches
(Emotions Perception, Facilitating Cognition through Emotions, Understanding Emotions,
and Managing Emotions), which combine to form two areas (Experiential and Strategic). A
total emotional intelligence score can also be obtained. Various studies provide evidence for
the discriminant and predictive validity of the test. However, there is mixed support for the
postulated factorial structure and the issue of scoring items with reference to consensual
norms or expert ratings is seen as problematic by many authors (e.g., MacCann, Matthews,
Zeidner, & Roberts, 2003). In the present study, the French version of the MSCEIT was
administered.
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Multimodal Emotion Recognition Test
The Multimodal Emotion Recognition Test (Bänziger, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2009) measures
emotion recognition ability on the basis of 30 dynamic actor portrayals (short video clips)
which represent ten emotion categories (anxiety, panic fear, happiness, elation, cold anger, hot
anger, sadness, despair, disgust, and contempt). These portrayals are presented on a computer
in four modes: audio/video, video only, audio only, and as a still picture extracted from the
video clips. After each stimulus, participants are asked to select the emotion category
portrayed by the actor. A first validation study provided support for the construct validity of
the MERT, which also showed satisfactory test-retest reliability (Bänziger et al., 2009).
MiniPONS
The short version of the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (Bänziger, Scherer, Hall, &
Rosenthal, 2011) is a performance-based test to measure the ability to recognize other’s
affective states and intentions from different nonverbal channels. It consists of 64 brief
recordings (in one of six modalities: body only, face only, two versions of voice only, two
combined versions of face & voice) of a young woman displaying one of 20 different
interpersonal situations such as asking for a favor, asking for forgiveness, or threatening
someone. Participants are asked to choose out of two options the interpersonal situation that
represents best the actor’s intention in each recording. The MiniPONS correlates highly with
the full PONS that had been validated extensively with different outcome variables and in
different cultures since 1979 (Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979).
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Figure S1
Correlation plot of the 32 subscales of 8 SEEC measures (Fruchterman-Reingold layout).
Note. Scale names and numbers are provided in Table 1 in the article. Edge thickness
indicates the strength of the correlation (the thicker the edge, the stronger the correlation),
edge color indicates the direction of the correlation (green= positive, red= negative).
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