Do social engagement skills exist and matter beyond personality facet traits and vocational interests? A generalization study across six countries

Abstract

Social engagement skills as capacities for active interpersonal engagement are thought to conceptually differ from behavioral and motivational tendencies and to predict learning and life outcomes. We tested these assumptions on the distinct nature and relevance of social engagement skills. Quota-representative self-reports from 6987 adults in six countries showed strong relations of social engagement skills with personality facets and weaker with vocational interests. Partially supporting their distinctiveness, social engagement skills were not fully reducible to those correlates. Skills predicted self-reported learning, quality-of-life, and job outcomes, but offered little incremental validity beyond personality and interests. Results largely generalized across countries. Yet, the complex interplay between social engagement skills, individual differences, and outcomes demonstrated cross-country variations, suggesting sensitivity to sociocontextual factors. We conclude that while social engagement skills conceptually differ from personality and interests and in themselves predict life success, they add limited empirical value beyond these constructs, at least for self-reports.

Educational relevance statement

Social engagement skills are the capacities to actively engage with others. It is thought that these capacities differ from other person characteristics (e.g., behavioral or motivational tendencies), and that this distinction matters for explaining life success. Our study showed that while self-reported social engagement skills shared similarities with other person characteristics, they still had unique aspects. Moreover, social engagement skills mattered, such that more skilled adults reported higher quality-of-life, but not necessarily better learning. However, social engagement skills did not provide much extra insight into life success beyond what was already known from other person characteristics. Other than the remaining results, these complex relations between social engagement skills, person characteristics, and life success largely varied across countries. The results highlight the importance of assessing social skills in a situation-specific manner, which will be imperative for targeted educational practices in the future. Moreover, our study focused on adults, limiting applicability to youth, but results suggest that intervention efforts targeting social engagement skills may probably yield more interpersonal than academic benefits. Finally, when designing or adapting complex educational programs, practitioners should consider sociocontextual factors.