Description of instruments used in the study

Social Skills Inventory. The Social Skills Inventory (SSI, Riggio, 1986) is a widely used 90-item self-report questionnaire designed to measure 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 five-point 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 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”). 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 16-item 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 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 career-related outcomes. The questionnaire was translated into French using the translation-back-translation 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, self-motivation, 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”.

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.

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 others’ 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).

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).