This chapter introduces the concept of social and emotional skills, emphasising the significance of these skills in adults’ lives and their relationship with key education, labour market and social outcomes. The chapter argues that these skills will be important for addressing the global challenges resulting from population ageing, advances in artificial intelligence and global migration. Another key focus is the malleability of social and emotional skills – their potential for improvement through targeted policies and interventions. After presenting key concepts and definitions, the chapter describes how social and emotional skills are measured in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills.
Skills that Matter for Success and Well‑being in Adulthood
Evidence on Adults' Social and Emotional Skills from the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills
Abstract
Next to cognitive skills, social and emotional skills are an important part of an individual’s skill set. Abilities such as self-control, sociability and emotional regulation are essential for mastering many situations at work and in everyday life. Such skills have been shown to significantly influence key life outcomes. A vast body of evidence links them to academic success, higher educational attainment and improved labour market prospects, including better employment opportunities and higher wages. In addition, they predict important non-economic outcomes such as physical and mental health, subjective well-being, and social and political participation. In some instances, the strength of these associations is comparable to that of cognitive skills.
In the future, social and emotional skills will likely become more important for individuals and societies. As artificial intelligence (AI) technology advances, surpassing humans in an increasing number of cognitive skills, social and emotional skills will constitute an important advantage in performing tasks that cannot be performed by machines. Population ageing and the growing demand for elderly care will increase the need for skills like empathy, patience and communication skills. As international migration continues to diversify communities and societies, tolerance, co-operation and open-mindedness will become essential for social cohesion and the functioning of democracy. Moreover, the climate crisis will call for innovative solutions, which will require imagination and adaptability.
Policymakers, educators and researchers have recognised the importance of strengthening people’s social and emotional skills. This is reflected in the growing research interest in these skills, ongoing efforts to measure and assess them, as well as policies aimed at integrating them into national curricula. These initiatives have been driven by evidence showing that these skills are malleable. This means that social and emotional skills can be learned, particularly during childhood and adolescence, and can be thus changed through targeted policies and interventions.
The OECD has made important contributions to promoting the development of social and emotional skills. Its International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) has explored various cognitive and social and emotional skills of children at the age of five, a crucial stage in human development. The OECD has broadened its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to assess self-efficacy, persistence, intellectual curiosity, meta-cognition and achievement motivation among 15-year-olds. Additionally, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) asks teachers on their sense of preparedness in helping students develop such skills. Most notably, the OECD launched the Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) to assess the social and emotional skills of 10- and 15-year-old students, along with the environments and practices that support their development. The SSES 2023 was carried out in six countries and ten sub-national entities.
The Survey of Adult Skills, part of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), has taken this work one step further by assessing social and emotional skills of adults aged 16 to 65. The Survey of Adult Skills is a large-scale international assessment of adults’ proficiency in three foundational cognitive skills – literacy, numeracy and problem solving. These skills are seen as “key information-processing skills” since they are necessary for fully integrating into the labour market, social and civil life, and are relevant to many social contexts and work situations (OECD, 2024[1]). The first cycle of the survey was conducted over three rounds between 2012 and 2017. In its second cycle, conducted in 2023, the survey expanded its scope to include measures of social and emotional skills. Twenty-nine of the 31 participating countries and economies included a set of items from the Big Five Inventory in the background questionnaire to measure social and emotional skills of adults (Soto and John, 2017[2]).
This report studies the distribution and impact of adults’ social and emotional skills as assessed in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills. It examines how these skills differ by socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender and parental education. It also explores how these skills contribute to success in work and life in adulthood, over and above the impact of the cognitive skills measured in the survey. Indicators of life success include education outcomes (e.g. educational attainment and field of education), employment outcomes (e.g. labour market participation, wages and occupational choice), and various non-economic outcomes (e.g. health, life satisfaction and volunteering).
The Survey of Adult Skills is the one of the few studies that assesses adults’ social and emotional skills internationally and combines them with a direct assessment of key cognitive skills. This combination provides valuable insights for policymakers seeking to develop and sustain a skilled adult population. The survey enables a broader perspective of the skills relevant to the economy and society. It helps determine the relative contribution of cognitive and social and emotional skills across different social and economic outcomes. It allows assessing the impacts of social and emotional skills for different social groups and for individuals at different levels of proficiency in information-processing skills, supporting policymakers in the design and implementation of more targeted and effective policies. Finally, it shows how social and emotional skills influence participation in initial education and adult learning, shedding light on the role of social and emotional skills in developing and maintaining key cognitive skills.
This chapter sets the stage for the analyses in this report by discussing the importance of assessing adults’ social and emotional skills and examining their distribution and impact. The chapter argues that these skills can support individuals and societies in coping with the global challenges resulting from population ageing, advances in artificial intelligence and global migration. It highlights empirical evidence on the malleability of social and emotional skills as well as on their impact on key education, labour market and social outcomes. After presenting key definitions and concepts, the chapter introduces the Big Five model of personality, which constitutes the theoretical foundation for the items used in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills to measure social and emotional skills.
Today’s world is diverse, dynamic and uncertain and the future will likely be even more complex. In this context, social and emotional skills are important for navigating change and adapting to new circumstances. Skills such as emotional stability and curiosity help foster a flexible mindset and support constructive responses to new situations, while skills such as empathy and communication skills enable individuals to maintain positive relationships even during challenging times. The following sections discuss how social and emotional skills can support individuals and societies to adapt to the concrete demands of technological change, population ageing and global migration.
The AI revolution
Advances in AI are driving a broad and rapid transformation: Compared to other technologies, AI is applicable to a larger range of human tasks and is evolving fast due to significant investment and research. In some jobs, machines may take over certain routine or cognitive tasks previously performed by humans. More broadly, AI will reshape how work is organised and performed, requiring workers to adapt to new roles, collaborate with intelligent systems and develop different skill sets.
How evolving AI will affect employment will depend on how AI capabilities compare to human skills relevant in occupations. Over the past decade, AI has become faster, less biased and more accurate on a variety of cognitive tasks compared to humans. These include language processing and generation, translation, reasoning, image and speech recognition, predictions and pattern identification. One possible scenario for the future is that AI will take over routine and analytical tasks, while work will increasingly shift towards tasks that involve higher-level cognitive skills as well as social and emotional skills. Concretely, workers may increasingly specialise in tasks such as negotiating, influencing, communicating or persuading, while machines can complement them in other tasks, such as forecasting, automated reporting or quality control.
In parallel, AI is leading to the emergence of new occupations and industries due to the development of new products and services. What makes AI a driver of innovation is its applicability in a variety of sectors and occupations (Filippucci et al., 2024[3]; Lane and Saint-Martin, 2021[4]). In addition, AI is increasingly used in research to systemise vast amounts of information and identify patterns in high-dimensional data (Wang et al., 2023[5]). This makes this technology an “invention of a method of invention” (Cockburn, Henderson and Stern, 2018[6]).
Social and emotional skills can play a role as a catalyst for AI’s innovation potential. The discovery of potential new uses for AI ultimately depends on human creativity, critical thinking and intellectual curiosity. Moreover, since innovation emerges through interactions between individuals or organisations, social and emotional skills related to communication will become more important. Openness to experience and the ability to adopt diverse perspectives may also gain significance as breakthroughs often occur at the intersection of different fields and industries.
How AI will reshape the world of work remains an open question. What is certain is that workers will need to adapt to new circumstances. This may involve acquiring AI-related skills or reskilling for entirely new professions. Navigating these changes successfully will again require solid social and emotional skills, especially resilience, emotional stability and readiness to learn.
Population ageing
The populations of OECD countries are ageing, and this trend is projected to continue. By 2050, the proportion of people aged 50 and over is expected to increase to 44% (from 37% in 2023), and that of people aged 65 and over to 25% (from 18% in 2023) (OECD, 2024[7]). Thus, the proportion of older workers in the workforce as well as the population share of older adults in need of care will increase. This will have implications for skills.
A growing share of older workers who retire at a later age would increase the need for up- and reskilling of adults. Governments will need to expand opportunities for lifelong learning and continuing education to meet current and future labour market demands. Older workers will need to improve their skills and learn new skills to remain competitive in the labour market. Social and emotional skills will be important in this context. Especially resilience, emotional stability and openness to experience can support older workers in adapting to the changing demands of occupations.
At the same time, the growing need for elderly care will directly increase the demand for social and emotional skills such as empathy, patience, tolerance and interpersonal communication. These skills will be essential not only for caregivers but also for society at large to foster social cohesion in demographically diverse populations. For their part, older adults will need skills like resilience, extraversion and openness to experience to remain an active part of society.
Migration
Immigration into most OECD countries has increased over the past decades and may well increase further in the future due to conflicts, humanitarian crises, and economic and ecological imbalances around the world. This presents both challenges and opportunities to host countries. Migration diversifies communities both culturally and economically, challenging social cohesion and social trust. However, it also increases the supply of labour in the host country and can contribute to economic growth. A precondition for the latter is that migrants have strong skills that enable them to fully participate in the labour market and society of the host country. Among these skills are knowledge of the local language and skills demanded in the local labour market. Social and emotional skills, such as openness, respectfulness, trust in others, sociability and perspective taking, are also crucial for integrating into a new society. Such skills will be also increasingly important in society at large to maintain cohesion in increasingly diverse populations.
Policy and research have used various concepts to describe social and emotional skills. These skills have been referred to as non-cognitive skills, soft skills, 21st-century skills, employability skills, transversal skills, life skills, character skills or personality traits (Jones et al., 2016[8]). Over time, the term “social and emotional skills” has become widely recognised as an umbrella term for these skills, serving two important purposes. First, it helps distinguish these skills from conventional cognitive skills. While cognitive skills involve the mental capacity to acquire knowledge, and access, interpret and reflect information, social and emotional skills relate to engaging and collaborating with others (social) and regulating own emotions and behaviour to achieve goals (emotional). Second, the term clarifies that, like cognitive skills, these traits are skills. That is, they contribute to individual well-being and socio-economic progress and can be meaningfully measured (OECD, 2015[9]).
The OECD defines social and emotional skills as: “individual capacities that can be (a) manifested in consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours, (b) developed through formal and informal learning experiences, and (c) important drivers of socio-economic outcomes throughout the individual’s life” (OECD, 2015, p. 35[9]). This definition emphasises that social and emotional skills are relatively stable latent traits that shape how we think, act and feel.1 They encompass attributes that are highly heritable (such as personality traits, dispositions, beliefs, values, temperament and self-perceptions) but at the same time they are also “learnable” and can be cultivated over time – much like traditional cognitive skills. Their teachability, together with their impact on success in work and life, makes them highly relevant for policy considerations.
The Big Five model of personality
The Big Five model of personality is a framework that subsumes many of the social and emotional skills discussed in the literature. This framework was adopted in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills and has guided previous OECD work on social and emotional skills.
The Big Five model of personality, also known as the Five Factor Model, emerged from decades of psychological research aimed at identifying the fundamental traits of human personality. It is the result of numerous independent studies that analysed and grouped adjectives related to personality (e.g. “shy”, “talkative”, “compassionate”, etc.) to determine the core dimensions through which people describe themselves and others. These studies consistently found that personality characteristics could be grouped into five broad dimensions, forming the foundation of the Big Five model. The model is thus empirically derived rather than driven by theory. Instead of representing a single strand of research, it represents various and diverse data-driven systems of personality characteristics, integrated into a common taxonomy (John, Naumann and Soto, 2008[10]).
During the 1990s and 2000s, research on the Big Five model proliferated. Extensive work confirmed its validity and reliability across different types of samples and methodological approaches (McCrae and Costa, 2003[11]). In addition, numerous studies demonstrated the replicability of the model in different countries, cultures and language contexts (McCrae and Costa, 1997[12]). More importantly, disciplines as diverse as psychology, sociology, education and economics have found the model to be highly valuable for analytical purposes, effectively predicting outcomes across various life domains (Roberts et al., 2007[13]). Today, the Big Five framework stands as the most widely accepted and commonly used framework of personality traits.
The Big Five model organises personality characteristics hierarchically into five broad, higher-order “domains” each subsuming several more specific “facet” traits. This offers a parsimonious and efficient, yet detailed account of social and emotional skills. While the domain-level scales have the advantage of high bandwidth, that is, they efficiently summarise a large amount of behavioural information that predicts a variety of outcomes, the facet-level subscales offer high fidelity, that is, they provide a more precise description of behaviour and can predict specific outcomes with higher accuracy (Soto and John, 2017[14]).
The Big Five domains are the following (Costa and McCrae, 1992[15]; John, Naumann and Soto, 2008[10]):
Agreeableness: refers to a prosocial and communal orientation towards others. Individuals with high levels of this trait have a tendency toward altruism, tender-mindedness, trust, co-operation and modesty. Conversely, those with low agreeableness are more likely to be driven by self-interest and scepticism about others' motives. They are more often competitive and challenging.
Conscientiousness: describes a tendency for impulse control that facilitates task- and goal-oriented behaviour. Conscientious individuals tend to cautiously plan before acting, follow norms and rules and are more capable of delaying gratification. They are more likely to be self-controlled, organised, ambitious, persistent and dedicated in achieving goals. Low conscientiousness is associated with flexibility and spontaneity, but can also mean impulsiveness, procrastination and sloppiness.
Emotional stability: refers to even-temperedness and positive emotionality. Individuals with high levels of this trait are relaxed, comfortable with themselves and able to control their emotions and moods. In contrast, those with low emotional stability have a tendency toward anxiety, depression and temperamental nature.
Extraversion: implies an energetic and action-oriented approach to life. Extroverted individuals show the tendency to seek the company of others, to initiate and engage in activities, to feel comfortable around people. They are more likely to be assertive, dominant, enthusiastic and outgoing. In comparison, individuals with low levels of this trait have lower social engagement and energy levels. They are more likely to prefer solitude and to be quiet and reserved.
Openness to experience: refers to the originality and complexity of one’s personality. Individuals with high levels of openness are imaginative, enjoy exploring new ideas, and are open to new experiences. They have a tendency for aesthetic sensitivity and self-exploration. In contrast, individuals with low levels of openness are more likely to prefer tradition, routine and concrete facts over abstract ideas. They tend to be pragmatic and direct.
Each of these Big Five domains represents a spectrum or continuum of behavioural tendencies, rather than a binary categorisation of extreme personality types. Individuals can score higher or lower on each domain, reflecting varying degrees in the expression of the behaviours related to the domain.
The Big Five domains can be assessed with varying levels of depth. That is, researchers can apply broad or narrow measures to slice down each of the five personality domains into more or fewer facets. For example, past research has identified nine, six, four or three facets per domain (Costa Jr. and McCrae, 1995[16]; Hofstee, de Raad and Goldberg, 1992[17]; Saucier and Ostendorf, 1999[18]). The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills uses the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2) that can be administered in shorter or longer forms (Soto and John, 2017[2]). Depending on the number of items used in the particular country or economy, the instrument allows for measuring up to three facets per domain (see Box 1.3).
The multifaceted nature of the Big Five model allows it to effectively encompass a wide range of social and emotional skills from other frameworks. For example, many of the so-called 21st-century skills2 can be subsumed to one of the Big Five domains (Chernyshenko, Kankaraš and Drasgow, 2018[19]). In addition, empirical studies demonstrate a significant degree of overlap between the social and emotional skills represented in the CASEL framework3 and the Big Five model (Primi et al., 2016[20]; Walton et al., 2021[21]). These studies rely on both a factor analytic, data-driven approaches as well as judgements from experts in the fields of personality psychology and social and emotional learning. Such overlaps led some researchers to argue that the Big Five model can serve as a guiding framework to organise the multitude of social and emotional skills studied in the literature (Martin et al., 2019[22]; Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini, 2023[23]; Walton et al., 2021[21]).
The inclusion of the Big Five inventory in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills constitutes an important extension of OECD’s efforts to understand and measure social and emotional skills. Until now, OECD’s work in this field has been largely focused on childhood and adolescence, life phases during which social and emotional skills are particularly malleable. In most cases, surveys have assessed these skills as a complement to comprehensive assessments of cognitive skills. An exception is the Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), where social and emotional skills are the primary focus of the assessment. The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills extends this work into adulthood, enabling a more comprehensive analysis of how social and emotional skills evolve and matter throughout life.
Note: Constructs covered in the International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS), the Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES), the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). Note that some PISA assessment rounds have focused on collaborative problem solving, global competence, meta cognition and creative thinking.
Figure 1.1 summarises the approaches taken to elicit social and emotional skills in OECD surveys. The wide range of skills measured in different surveys from respondents at different stages of life – from early childhood through adolescence to adulthood – reflects the diversity of constructs explored in the academic literature and underscores the relevance of social and emotional skills at all ages. In addition, many other OECD studies touch upon aspects of social and emotional skills and social and emotional learning. For example, the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) assesses teachers’ practices aimed at promoting social and emotional learning (OECD, 2022[24]), while the Education 2040 project views social and emotional skills as a core component of the learning framework for the future.1
Different surveys have used different concepts and measures of social and emotional skills – such that are most appropriate for the age group covered and the specific purposes of each study. The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills assesses a few broadly defined skill domains through an extra short version of the Big Five inventory. The parsimony of the measures was an important consideration in the context of PIAAC, as the primary focus of the survey is the assessment of cognitive abilities, and any additional measures had to be carefully balanced against the risk of increasing response times and respondent burden. By contrast, the SSES (and PISA in its 2022 cycle) offer more comprehensive measures of multiple, more narrowly defined skill domains. The measures implemented in the different surveys can all be traced back to the Big Five model as an overarching framework. At the same time, there are important differences across the surveys, in terms of instruments, target population and survey implementation, and no formal link exists to allow for direct comparison of the results.
Most measures of social and emotional skills used in OECD assessments rely on respondents’ self-reports, as they are cost-effective, easy to administer and yield consistent results – often providing accurate approximations of objective measures. A notable exception is PISA 2022, which introduced a task-based assessment of creative thinking. This assessment measures students’ capacity to generate diverse and original ideas through open-ended, interactive tasks. Closely related to this study, the Platform for Innovative Learning Assessments (PILA) provides digital learning activities with embedded assessments of complex competencies such as self-regulated learning and communication.2 The next round of SSES (SSES 2026) will also incorporate a direct assessment of empathy, reflecting recent advances in measurement methodologies in this research field.
Measures of social and emotional skills used in OECD surveys so far primarily focus on typical behaviours – that is, the consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that a particular person tends to apply across different situations and contexts. SSES 2026 will shift this focus to assessing maximum behaviours or capabilities. The survey will focus on what young people are capable of doing rather than on their tendency to behave in certain ways. Although measures of maximum and typical behaviours are positively correlated – individuals capable of a certain behaviour are more likely to develop a tendency toward it – recent evidence shows that maximum behaviour measures offer unique insights and are valuable for predicting important outcomes (Soto et al., 2022[25]).
OECD surveys generally cover social and emotional skills that are malleable, that is, responsive to policy interventions. However, a recent OECD review has shown that these skills can differ in their degree of teachability (Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini, 2023[26]). For example, while skills such as self-control, assertiveness, empathy and emotional control appear to be highly teachable, empirical evidence suggests moderate degrees of teachability for trust, optimism and perspective-taking. In light of this evidence, SSES 2026 will prioritise skills that have been shown to be particularly amenable to school-based interventions.
The OECD aims to develop a comprehensive understanding and measurement of social and emotional skills across all stages of life. Evidence from OECD surveys and the wider academic community has underscored the importance of these skills for a wide range of life outcomes. This has raised the interest in these skills and has triggered efforts to improve their assessment, to provide more precise, meaningful and policy-relevant measures.
1 See https://www.oecd.org/en/data/tools/oecd-learning-compass-2030.html (accessed 14 May 2025).
2 See https://pilaproject.org/ (accessed 14 May 2025).
For the remainder of this report, the terms “Big Five domains”, “social and emotional skills” and “personality traits” will be used interchangeably. Facet-level skills will be referred to as “Big Five facets” or “sub-domains”. The Big Five personality traits will be considered skills in this report since they are shown to contribute to important life outcomes, can be changed, although being relatively stable over time, and are shown to subsume many of social and emotional skills studied in the literature.
Interpreting results based on Big Five domain and facet skills
Several points should be taken into consideration when interpreting the results of this report.
First, it is important to note that the Big Five is a descriptive model, not a normative one. The model emerged from statistical analysis (i.e. factor analysis) of personality descriptions, rather than from a theory about how people should behave. It does not label specific personality traits as “good” or “bad”. Nor does it assume that having more of a given trait is necessarily better.
In fact, variations in the Big Five domains can carry both positive and negative connotations. For example, high levels of extraversion may be associated with overconfidence and superficial social relations. High agreeableness can lead to submissiveness. High emotional stability might be perceived as indifference, extreme conscientiousness as perfectionism, and extreme openness as impracticality. Conversely, low extraversion may reflect humility and quiet introspection, low agreeableness can signal independent-mindedness, low emotional stability may indicate heightened sensitivity, low conscientiousness can reflect spontaneity and being easy-going, and low openness to experience may suggest a practical and down-to-earth approach.
Moreover, research shows that the same trait can be linked to both desirable and undesirable outcomes across different life domains. Extraversion, for example, is linked to leadership (Judge et al., 2002[27]) and better employment chances (Izadi and Tuhkuri, 2024[28]), but also to risky behaviours, such as substance use and gambling (O’Connell, 2023[29]).
Second, the influence of a given trait on an outcome can vary depending on context or situation. This report presents associations between the Big Five measures and life outcomes at the country level and, in some cases, for specific socio-demographic groups. These relationships may also differ across industries, occupations or fields of study.
Third, the Big Five personality traits are assessed through self-reports, which rely on respondents' perceptions of their typical thoughts, feelings and behaviours. This approach may introduce bias as some respondents may tend to present themselves in a more favourable light or may not have a clear or consistent understanding of their own behaviour across different situations. In the Survey of Adult Skills, respondents’ answers to the Big Five items are assessed by interviewers, which may further increase the risk of social desirability bias. Furthermore, cultural norms can influence how people interpret and respond to Big Five items, undermining cross-cultural comparability.
Fourth, the results of this report are based on cross-sectional regression analyses and may not reflect a true causal relationship between social and emotional skills and life outcomes. Consequently, the reported relationships should be interpreted as associations rather than causal impacts of these skills.
Extensive empirical evidence from psychology, education science, economics and social sciences shows that social and emotional skills help individuals navigate life and achieve success. The positive impacts of these skills have been observed at different stages of the lifespan and across various life domains and contexts. In some instances, these impacts can compete with those of long-established measures of cognitive skills.
The following sections provide a glimpse at this literature to highlight the importance of social and emotional skills as drivers of key life outcomes. A particular focus therein lies on research using the Big Five model of personality. It is important to note that the relationships between social and emotional skills and many of the outcomes mentioned below have been often shown to be non-linear (see, for example, Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner (2024[30])). In many cases, having more of a certain skill is beneficial only up to a point, after which additional increases may bring diminishing returns or even negative effects.
Educational success
Social and emotional skills have been shown to influence various academic outcomes. In particular, conscientiousness – the tendency for organised, persistent and responsible behaviour – is a predictor of grades and performance in standardised tests across different education levels (Poropat, 2009[31]; Almlund et al., 2011[32]; Mammadov, 2021[33]). Openness to experience has also been shown to impact academic performance (Almlund et al., 2011[32]). Results of the OECD’s SSES point into a similar direction by showing that achievement motivation, persistence, responsibility and self-control, traits closely related to conscientiousness, as well as curiosity, are associated with higher grades and lower levels of absenteeism and tardiness (OECD, 2024[34]). Importantly, the effects of social and emotional skills are independent of those of cognitive abilities, such as IQ, reasoning ability or processing speed (Borghans et al., 2016[35]; Noftle and Robins, 2007[36]; Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner, 2024[30]).
In addition, social and emotional skills are linked to higher educational attainment (Cobb-Clark et al., 2019[37]; Cunha, Heckman and Schennach, 2010[38]). This is particularly the case for openness to experience, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that emotional intelligence is associated with lower risk of university dropout (Qualter et al., 2009[39]). Social and emotional skills have been also linked to informal learning at work (Cerasoli et al., 2017[40]) and participation in adult education and learning (Laible, Anger and Baumann, 2020[41]; Sörman et al., 2024[42]).
Economic success
Various social and emotional skills are found to impact individuals’ labour market chances and earnings. Conscientiousness and emotional stability have been linked to higher chances of being full-time employed (Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner, 2024[30]). These skills, together with openness to experience, relate to higher incomes (Cabus, Napierala and Carretero, 2021[43]). Extraversion – being outgoing and sociable – is related to higher chances for being employed and higher chances for becoming an entrepreneur (Brandstätter, 2011[44]; Izadi and Tuhkuri, 2024[28]; Schoon and Duckworth, 2012[45]). Extensive literature from labour economics links locus of control – the degree to which individuals believe they have control over their lives – to a number of labour market outcomes, including higher earning, faster earnings growth, better employment opportunities and shorter unemployment spells following a job loss (Cobb-Clark, 2015[46]). Other traits, such as self-confidence, social co-operation, self-efficacy and sense of mastery, have been also shown to play a role for labour market success (OECD, 2015[9]; Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini, 2023[26]). Again, the impacts of social and emotional skills on employment outcomes still hold after controlling for cognitive skills (Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner, 2024[30]). However, it should be noted that the effects of the Big Five domains on earnings are rather small, when controlled for education and cognitive skills (Alderotti, Rapallini and Traverso, 2023[47]; Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner, 2024[30]).
Health
There is ample evidence that strong social and emotional skills are linked to better health. Agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability are linked to various healthier behaviours, such as lower risks of smoking and alcohol misuse (Strickhouser, Zell and Krizan, 2017[48]). They are positively related to self-reported general health, even after accounting for various personal characteristics, including cognitive skills (Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner, 2024[30]). By contrast, extraversion is less related to mental and general health and more predictive of physical activity (Strickhouser, Zell and Krizan, 2017[48]). OECD’s SSES confirms that social and emotional skills, especially optimism, achievement motivation, persistence and responsibility, are linked with positive health behaviours among students (OECD, 2024[34]). Other studies show that social and emotional skills are linked to lower risks of obesity among young people (OECD, 2015[9]).
Subjective well-being
Social and emotional skills also influence how people feel and how they perceive their lives. Various studies show that social and emotional skills, particularly agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and self-control, are linked to higher life satisfaction (Rammstedt, Lechner and Danner, 2024[30]; Strickhouser, Zell and Krizan, 2017[48]). These traits are also associated with higher job satisfaction (Cobb-Clark et al., 2022[49]; Judge, Heller and Mount, 2002[50]). Moreover, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability are negatively related to loneliness (Buecker et al., 2020[51]). Findings from OECD’s SSES indicate that optimism, energy, stress resistance and emotional control are associated with higher life satisfaction among 10- and 15-years-old students. These traits also support a positive body image, while optimism, achievement motivation, persistence and responsibility are positively linked to students’ satisfaction with their relationships (OECD, 2024[34]).
Societal outcomes
Social and emotional skills impact individual outcomes that, in their aggregate, are important for the proper functioning of society. Such outcomes broadly include anti- or prosocial behaviours, crime, and engagement in political and civic life. Extensive evidence suggests that low agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability are linked to behaviours such as alcohol and drugs abuse, gambling, bullying, aggression and offending (Dash et al., 2019[52]; Jolliffe and Farrington, 2022[53]; Jones, Miller and Lynam, 2011[54]; Mitsopoulou and Giovazolias, 2015[55]). On the other hand, agreeableness is positively related to helping and empathy (Graziano and Habashi, 2010[56]; Habashi, Graziano and Hoover, 2016[57]; Mooradian, Davis and Matzler, 2011[58]). With regard to civic engagement, extraversion and emotional stability were found to increase the likelihood of voting, donating to a candidate, volunteering for a candidate or party, or attending a political rally (Furnham and Cheng, 2019[59]; Gerber et al., 2011[60]). Extraversion and agreeableness were shown to predict volunteering (Ackermann, 2019[61]; Capra, Jiang and Su, 2021[62]; Omoto, Packard and Ballew, 2020[63]).
Social and emotional skills are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. A meta-analysis based on results from twin studies as well as family and adoption studies suggests that approximately 60% of the individual differences in the Big Five domains are due to environmental influences, while around 40% are explained by genetic inheritance (Vukasović and Bratko, 2015[64]). Thus, these skills are not fixed traits; rather they can be shaped by the family environment, social context or major life events. Moreover, they can be deliberately changed though targeted interventions, such as training, education, parenting practices and participation in specific activities. This susceptibility to deliberate change makes investments in these skills both feasible and valuable.
Research indicates that childhood and adolescence are particularly sensitive periods for the development of social and emotional skills. During these stages, the brain exhibits a high degree of plasticity, making it especially responsive to external influences from education, parenting and social environments (Cantor et al., 2018[65]; Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini, 2023[23]). As a result, programmes aiming to cultivate or strengthen social and emotional capabilities typically intervene at early life stages.
Programmes are often offered in schools and are designed to integrate the development of social and emotional skills into the everyday educational experience. They include structured curricula that explicitly teach skills such as emotional regulation, empathy and collaboration, often under comprehensive frameworks like CASEL. In addition, many schools implement whole-school approaches that align teaching practices, disciplinary strategies and school climate with the goal of fostering a supportive and inclusive environment for social and emotional development. Teacher training and staff development are also critical components, equipping educators with the tools to teach and reinforce these skills effectively (see Box 1.2 for an example of a programme).
Studies on the effectiveness of school-based interventions aimed at promoting social and emotional skills indicate meaningful changes in these skills, even after relatively short training periods. A comprehensive meta-analysis by Cipriano et al. (2023[66]), which draws on 424 studies from 53 countries, covering over 575 000 students, shows that such interventions significantly enhance students’ social and emotional skills, attitudes and prosocial behaviours. However, outcomes vary greatly depending on programme content, implementation quality and contextual factors, such as school climate. Overall, programme design features strongly influence programme effectiveness (Cipriano et al., 2023[66]). Programmes that follow the so-called SAFE principles – those that are Sequenced (building skills gradually), Active (engaging students in practice), Focused (targeting specific skills), and Explicit (clearly defining learning objectives) – are shown to produce significantly stronger impacts.
Programmes promoting social and emotional learning among children and adolescents have been shown to improve competences that can be closely mapped onto the Big Five personality characteristics. A recent literature review by Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini (2023[26]) classified a number of social and emotional skills in terms of teachability, drawing on evidence from 74 school-based interventions. The study concluded that there is moderate to very high evidence on the teachability of responsibility, persistence and self-control (skills conceptually close to the facets of conscientiousness), stress resistance, optimism and emotional control (linked to emotional stability), assertiveness (a facet of extraversion), as well as co-operation, trust and empathy (skills related to agreeableness). In contrast, the empirical evidence on the teachability of curiosity and creativity, facets of openness to experience, was unclear, while findings on the teachability of sociability were limited.
While early life is a critical period, social and emotional skills remain malleable well into adulthood. A meta-analysis by Roberts et al. (2017[67]) synthesised more than 200 studies to explore how Big Five personality traits of adults change as a result of clinical and non-clinical interventions. The analysis finds that personality traits do change in response to interventions. Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability was the most amenable to change, followed by extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness, which showed statistically significant but more modest changes. Openness to experience showed the smallest changes. Importantly, changes in the Big Five traits were not only evident immediately after the intervention, but also endured over time, with follow-up data indicating sustained improvements 6 to 12 months later. This evidence challenges the traditional view of Big Five traits as stable traits across time by suggesting that interventions can lead to meaningful personality change.
In addition, research on social and emotional learning of students has paid increasing attention to the development of social and emotional skills of teachers. The reason is that adults need strong social and emotional competencies before engaging children in building the same skills. These studies have generally shown that teacher training and targeted interventions can change teachers’ social and emotional skills (see Jennings et al. (2017[68]) and Oliveira and colleagues (2021[69])). For example, Oliveira and colleagues (2021[69]) reviewed 43 empirical studies which evaluated the efficacy of school-based interventions involving 3 004 teachers and found that these interventions significantly impacted teachers’ social and emotional competencies, emotional competence and psychological distress. Another meta-analysis by Oliveira et al. (2021[70]) showed that interventions targeting teachers’ social and emotional skills significantly reduced burnout symptoms.
The RULER programme, developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, stands as a systemic and evidence-based approach to embedding social and emotional learning across entire school communities – from pre-school through high school. RULER prioritises five foundational emotional intelligence skills:
recognising emotions in oneself and others
understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
labelling emotions with nuanced vocabulary
expressing emotions appropriately within cultural and social contexts
regulating emotions using effective strategies.
These skills are nurtured through four core tools:
The Charter: a collaboratively created agreement outlining shared community norms
The Mood Meter: a visual tool to name and reflect on emotions (mapped across pleasantness and energy dimensions)
The Meta-Moment: a reflective pause enabling thoughtful emotional response
The Blueprint: a conflict-resolution framework encouraging empathy and constructive dialogue.
Implementation typically begins with training for school leaders, educators, staff and families. Schools often form a RULER Implementation Team (RIT), which becomes a local champion for the approach – embedding the tools into daily practice, curriculum and school culture. Ongoing coaching, online resources and community engagement support the sustainability of SEL across the institution.
Impacts of RULER are well documented through multiple rigorous evaluations, including randomised controlled trials (Cipriano et al., 2019[71]; Hagelskamp et al., 2013[72]). Schools that adopted RULER report improved academic achievement and classroom engagement, stronger social and leadership skills among students, reduced aggression and attention issues, healthier school climate, and lower levels of student anxiety and depression.
Recognised as a “SELect Program” by CASEL, RULER meets high standards for design, implementation support, and sustainability and has been adopted in over 3 500 schools globally, reaching more than one million students
Source: See https://rulerapproach.org/ (accessed 21 August 2025).
Overview of the Survey of Adult Skills
The Survey of Adult Skills focuses on the measurement of cognitive skills. It assesses the proficiency of adults aged 16-65 in literacy, numeracy and problem solving, skills deemed as “key information-processing skills”. In information-rich societies, these skills are needed for gaining access to information relevant for everyday life and for integrating into work and society. In addition, the survey includes a background questionnaire that collects rich information on respondents’ background and context, such as socio-demographics, education, employment, use of skills, well-being and civic engagement.
The Survey of Adult Skills is conducted every ten years. The first cycle of the survey took place between 2011 and 2017, with 39 countries and economies participating over three rounds of data collection. The second cycle of the survey has undergone one round of data collection so far, which took place 2022-23. The focus of this report is on the second survey cycle (referred to as 2023 Survey of Adult Skills) since it assessed social and emotional skills of respondents. Thirty-one countries and economies participated in this cycle. Among them, 29 included measures of social and emotional skills in the assessment: Austria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, England (United Kingdom), Estonia, Finland, the Flemish Region (Belgium), France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Sweden, the Slovak Republic, Spain and Switzerland.
The cognitive assessment in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills was administered on tablets. The assessment tasks reflect real-life situations that adults typically encounter at work and in personal life (e.g. read a newspaper article or calculate a budget). Many items were explicitly designed to reflect the types of tasks found in digital environments (e.g. navigate a website to respond) to account for the increased reliance on digital tools in information processing. Both the proficiency of adults and the difficulty of tasks are assessed on a 500-point scale. To help interpret the results, the reporting scales for each domain are divided into several proficiency levels. Below Level 1 and Level 1 are the lowest and Levels 4 and 5 are the highest proficiency levels (OECD, 2024[1]).
The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills defines literacy as “accessing, understanding, evaluating, and reflecting on written texts to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society” (Rouet et al., 2021[73]). Low-performing adults in literacy, i.e. those who score at Level 1 or below, typically can process meaning at the sentence level. They are able to locate relevant information in a text when this information is explicitly cued in the question. In contrast, adults with the highest literacy proficiency, at Level 4 or 5, are able to understand long and dense texts presented on multiple pages and to infer information from complex or implicit statements.
Numeracy means “accessing, using, and reasoning critically with mathematical content, information and ideas represented in multiple ways to engage in and manage the mathematical demands of a range of situations in adult life” (Tout et al., 2021[74]). Respondents at Level 1 or below in numeracy demonstrate elementary whole-number sense and can recognise common percentages or graphical representations. High proficiency in numeracy (at Levels 4-5) includes understanding and integrating multiple types of mathematical information, such as statistics and chance, spatial relationships and change. This information can be presented in complex and abstract ways or embedded in longer texts.
Adaptive problem solving (APS) involves “the capacity to achieve one’s goals in a dynamic situation in which a method for solution is not immediately available. It requires engaging in cognitive and metacognitive processes to define the problem, search for information, and apply a solution in a variety of information environments and contexts” (Greiff et al., 2021[75]). Proficiency in this domain is represented in five proficiency levels. Adults performing at Level 1 and below, the lowest proficiency levels, are able to understand simple, static problems situated within a clearly structured environment and implement solutions involving a limited number of steps. Adults performing at Level 4, the highest level of proficiency, are able to understand dynamic problems situated in complex and information-rich environments and apply multi-step solutions to address them.
Measuring social and emotional skills in the Survey of Adult Skills
The background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills contained self-reported measures of social and emotional skills. These are short versions of the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2): the so-called BFI-2-S and BFI-2-XS. While the BFI-2 uses 60 items to assess the Big Five personality domains and 15 underlying facets, the BFI-2-S uses 30 items instead – six items per domain and two items per facet. BFI-2-XS is a subset of BFI-2-S. It uses 15 items – three per domain and one per facet. These shorter versions were chosen because they provide a parsimonious and efficient way to measure the Big Five personality traits while retaining the full measure’s reliability and validity at the domain level (Soto and John, 2017[2]). However, only the BFI-2-S provides reliable and valid measures at the facet level (Soto and John, 2017[2]). Box 1.3 lists the items used in both versions.
Thirteen of the 29 countries and economies that administered the Big Five instrument in the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills used the longer BFI-2-S version. The remaining 16 countries and economies administered the BFI-2-XS version. Since the BFI-2-XS-version is a subset of the BFI-2-S and thus contained in all countries, it is the basis for comparisons across all 29 countries and economies. Analyses at the facet level are limited only to the 13 countries using BFI-2-S. The countries using each version are the following:
BFI-2-S: Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain
BFI-2-XS: Austria, Denmark, England (United Kingdom), Finland, the Flemish Region (Belgium), France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland.
Importantly, the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills uses within-country z-standardised scale scores of the Big Five domains and sub-domains (OECD, 2025[76]). These scores were created by calculating the mean response per respondent for a particular domain or facet; estimating the weighted point estimates of the mean and standard deviation of the scale scores within countries; assigning respondents z-scores based on the within-country weighted means and standard deviations for each domain and sub-domain. Individual scores thus indicate the distance from the country mean, expressed in units of the country’s standard deviation, where positive scores reflect above-average skills, and negative scores reflect below-average skills within a specific country.
As a consequence of this transformation, each country’s mean score equals zero and its standard deviation equals one. This makes comparisons of the mean and variance of social and emotional skills across countries meaningless. However, comparisons of mean differences and variances between socio-demographic groups within countries are possible. It is also possible to compare correlations of the Big Five measures with other variables across countries. For example, one can explore how gender gaps in social and emotional skills differ across countries, or how the relationship between these skills and wages varies internationally.
This approach was chosen to prevent comparisons of mean skill levels across countries. While psychometric analyses found the measures used in the survey to be comparable across groups within countries, they were not deemed comparable enough across countries (OECD, 2025[76]).
The Survey of Adult Skills provides policymakers with insights into the level of key information-processing skills essential for effective participation in the labour market and society across a broad range of countries. The 2023 cycle expands the survey’s scope by including measures of social and emotional skills. Concretely, it enables policymakers, researchers and educators to address three key policy questions:
1. Do social and emotional skills reinforce the acquisition of key information-processing skills? (Chapter 2)
Empirical evidence suggests that social and emotional skills contribute to the acquisition of education and cognitive skills. Simultaneously, cognitive abilities and the formal learning environment can impact the development of social and emotional skills, particularly in childhood and adolescence. The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills sheds light on the interplay between social and emotional skills, key information-processing skills and formal and non-formal education.
The background questionnaire of the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills contained Big Five personality measures. The items were administered by interviewers who presented respondents with a showcard including five response options, ranging from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. Respondents gave verbal responses to each of the items. These responses were later numerically coded from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree).
Different instruments were used in different countries. Sixteen countries and economies used the BFI-2-XS measure, and twelve countries used the BFI-2-S measure. The shorter BFI-2-XS is a subset of the BFI-2-S, meaning that all 15 items of the BFI-2-XS are also present in the 30 items of the BFI-2-S. All 30 items are listed in Table 1.1.
Note: (r) denotes reverse-coded items, where a positive response to the item corresponds to a low value on the overall personality domain.
The survey sheds light on how social and emotional skills are linked to educational attainment, across different birth cohorts and across countries and economies. It provides evidence on the extent to which these skills relate to the participation in non-formal learning and how they are linked to the use of information-processing skills at work and in everyday life. This evidence is important for informing policies aimed at promoting skill acquisition and preventing skill decline – particularly among older workers – as it provides insights into the factors that affect these processes.
2. How do cognitive and social and emotional skills relate to economic and social outcomes? (Chapters 3)
The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills provides evidence on how cognitive and social and emotional skills co-shape life. It shows how these skills relate to employment outcomes independently from each other, and how their relative importance varies by the specific outcome under consideration, by socio-demographic subgroup and by country. It also shows how these skills interact in affecting key life outcomes: for example, to what extent does the impact of social and emotional skills on important outcomes vary with the level of proficiency in information-processing skills? Can specific social and emotional skills compensate for low skills proficiency? Does this differ across countries?
In addition, the survey enables analyses on the impacts of cognitive and social and emotional skills on non-economic outcomes, including well-being, health or social and political engagement. It shows the extent to which these relationships are mediated by socio-demographic characteristics, education and economic outcomes, and how they differ between subpopulations and across countries.
3. How are social and emotional skills distributed in the population? (Chapter 4)
Understanding how social and emotional skills are distributed across the adult population is essential for designing equitable policies. These skills have been shown to influence a wide range of outcomes – including employment, health, education and civic engagement – and their unequal distribution can contribute to persistent social and economic inequalities. The 2023 Survey of Adult Skills shows how these skills vary by age, gender, parental education, immigrant background and education. This helps identify groups that can benefit from targeted interventions that strengthen social and emotional skills. At the same time, acknowledging that socio-demographic groups may differ in their social and emotional skills can guide the design of education and workplace settings that respect and accommodate this diversity.
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← 1. The Big Five personality traits represent typical behaviours and beliefs that individuals tend to apply across different situations and contexts. More recent work of the OECD concentrate on social and emotional skills manifested in maximum behaviours – capacities that can be exercised as needed. The two concepts are related as people who tend to behave in certain ways tend to be more capable to exercise these behaviours when needed and vice versa. However, maximum behaviours may offer additional information compared to typical behaviours, such as a person’s adaptability to different circumstances and performance on specific tasks in high-stake situations (Soto et al., 2022[25]). See Box 1.1 and Steponavičius, Gress-Wright and Linzarini (2023[23]) for more information.
← 2. See https://www.weforum.org/stories/2016/03/21st-century-skills-future-jobs-students/ (accessed 28 February 2025).
← 3. See https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/ (accessed 28 February 2025).