Workplace lesson 12 min read

What people skills predict

"Emotional intelligence matters more than IQ" is one of the most repeated claims in careers advice. The research tells a more careful story. Some people skills predict job performance modestly and reliably, some matter only in particular jobs, and some of the most popular measures largely repackage personality. Knowing which is which helps you decide where your preparation time goes.

How to read the numbers

Most findings below are correlations between a test score and later job performance, usually supervisor ratings. A correlation of 0 means the test tells an employer nothing; 1 would mean perfect prediction. Meta-analyses pool many studies and correct for known distortions such as unreliable performance ratings, giving an estimate written ρ (rho) or called an "operational validity".

Two cautions. First, even a strong predictor in this field sits around .40, so every test leaves most of the variation in performance unexplained. Second, the size of those corrections is contested. In 2022 Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens showed that many earlier meta-analyses over-corrected for range restriction, and revised the estimates for many of the best-known methods down by .10 to .20. The figures on this page use the revised estimates where they exist.

Operational validity for predicting job performance (revised estimates)
  • Structured interviews0.42
  • Empirically keyed biodata0.38
  • General mental ability tests0.31
  • Integrity tests0.31
  • Situational judgement tests0.26
  • Conscientiousness tests0.19

Two things on that chart matter for this subject. Structured interviews, the kind where every candidate gets the same competency questions scored against a rubric, came out on top. And SJTs and personality tests both predict, but less strongly than the marketing around them suggests.

Personality: conscientiousness leads

Barrick and Mount's 1991 meta-analysis, one of the most cited papers in personnel psychology, found that conscientiousness was the only Big Five trait related to performance across every occupational group they studied. Extraversion mattered for managers and sales staff. A decade later, Barrick, Mount and Judge pooled 15 earlier meta-analyses and confirmed the pattern.

Big Five traits and overall work performance (true-score correlations, independent samples)
  • Conscientiousness0.27
  • Extraversion0.15
  • Emotional stability0.13
  • Agreeableness0.13
  • Openness0.07

The overall picture hides useful detail. In the same second-order analysis, agreeableness, weak for overall performance, was the strongest Big Five predictor of teamwork (ρ = .34, though from only two meta-analyses and 1,820 people). Which trait matters depends on what the job asks of you. That is exactly why there is no single "best" personality profile to fake towards.

Emotional intelligence: modest, uneven, and often personality in disguise

Joseph and Newman's 2010 meta-analysis separated EI measures by type and found very different results.

.18Validity of performance-based ability EI tests for job performance (10 samples, 887 people)
.10Validity of the emotion perception branch on its own, across all jobs (8 samples, 562 people)
.47Validity of self-report mixed EI, which correlated up to .53 with Big Five traits
.24 to .30Range of corrected validities across three streams of EI measures in a larger meta-analysis

The self-report measures look strongest, but they overlap so heavily with personality that much of their validity is conscientiousness, stability and extraversion measured again. Ability EI, the kind you can actually get right or wrong, predicts less, and the key finding is where it predicts. Joseph and Newman coded each job for emotional labour: how much the work requires managing your own and others' emotions, as in sales, service and care roles.

0.10.20.21.01High emotional laboursales, service, careLow emotional labourlittle emotional demand
Emotion perception predicted performance in high emotional-labour jobs and not at all in low emotional-labour jobs (small samples, so treat as indicative).

So the honest summary for a campus candidate is this. Reading emotion well is a real, measurable ability that matters most in client-facing and people-heavy work. It is not a secret master skill that outranks reasoning.

Emotion recognition in the field

A handful of field studies link measured emotion recognition to real outcomes:

  • Sales. In two studies, building-supply salespeople who were better at reading nonverbal emotion earned higher salary increases, and car salespeople who were better sold more cars per month. Neither group rated themselves as more successful, a reminder that self-assessment of this skill is poor.
  • Leadership. Among 145 managers at a large biotechnology and agricultural company, emotion recognition ability predicted transformational leadership behaviour, alongside positive affect and agreeableness.
  • Negotiation. Elfenbein and colleagues reported a benefit of emotion recognition accuracy for effectiveness in negotiation.

It also relates to general ability. A meta-analysis of 133 samples found emotion recognition correlated r = .19 with intelligence, with stronger links for tests that combine face, voice and body than for tests using static pictures. That last detail matters: a static-face test like most online assessments captures only a narrow slice of the skill.

Situational judgement

The first large SJT meta-analysis estimated a validity of ρ = .34 across 102 coefficients and 10,640 people; the revised estimate in the chart above is .26. SJTs also add prediction beyond cognitive ability and the Big Five together. Christian and colleagues found that SJTs targeting teamwork and leadership had relatively high validities, and that video-based SJTs tended to outperform paper ones.

Interviews, where it all comes together

Structured interviews top the revised validity table. Within them, the question type matters. Taylor and Small's 2002 meta-analysis compared "what would you do" situational questions with "tell me about a time when" past-behaviour questions. When both used descriptively anchored rating scales, past-behaviour questions showed higher mean validity (.63 against .47, using the older correction methods). This is the research basis for the behavioural interview and for answer structures like STAR, covered in the next lesson.

562 peopleemotion perception and job performance48,100 peopleconscientiousnessand performance
Evidence is thinnest exactly where the claims are loudest: compare the sample behind the emotion-perception estimate with the one behind conscientiousness.

The limits, stated plainly

3 practice questions
  1. According to Joseph and Newman, in which jobs did emotion perception predict performance?
  2. Why do self-report 'mixed' EI questionnaires show higher validity than ability EI tests?
  3. Which selection method has the highest validity in Sackett et al.'s revised estimates?
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Sources
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  2. Berry, C. M., Lievens, F., Zhang, C., & Sackett, P. R. (2024). Insights from an updated personnel selection meta-analytic matrix: Revisiting general mental ability tests' role in the validity–diversity trade-off. Journal of Applied Psychology. doi.org/10.1037/apl0001203
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  8. Rubin, R. S., Munz, D. C., & Bommer, W. H. (2005). Leading from within: The effects of emotion recognition and personality on transformational leadership behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 48(5), 845–858. doi.org/10.5465/amj.2005.18803926
  9. Elfenbein, H. A., Foo, M. D., White, J., Tan, H. H., & Aik, V. C. (2007). Reading your counterpart: The benefit of emotion recognition accuracy for effectiveness in negotiation. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 31(4), 205–223. doi.org/10.1007/s10919-007-0033-7
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  12. McDaniel, M. A., Hartman, N. S., Whetzel, D. L., & Grubb, W. L. (2007). Situational judgment tests, response instructions, and validity: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 60(1), 63–91. doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00065.x
  13. Christian, M. S., Edwards, B. D., & Bradley, J. C. (2010). Situational judgment tests: Constructs assessed and a meta-analysis of their criterion-related validities. Personnel Psychology, 63(1), 83–117. doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2009.01163.x
  14. Taylor, P. J., & Small, B. (2002). Asking applicants what they would do versus what they did do: A meta-analytic comparison of situational and past behaviour employment interview questions. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 75(3), 277–294. doi.org/10.1348/096317902320369712
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