Social Skills Test (SSI)

Psychologist Ronald E. Riggio at California State University, Fullerton created the Social Skills Inventory (SSI) to break everyday communication down into distinct, observable habits rather than treating social skill as a single vague talent. First introduced in an earlier 1986 development paper and published in its revised 90-item form in 1989, the SSI organizes communication around three processes—expressing, reading, and regulating—across two channels: nonverbal emotional cues and verbal social interaction. Instead of testing personality traits, empathy, emotional intelligence, or social anxiety, the instrument looks specifically at your self-reported communication tendencies across six 15-item scales, rated on five response choices from not at all like me to exactly like me.

The first three scales focus on nonverbal and emotional signals. Emotional Expressivity reflects skill in nonverbal sending, including felt emotional states and interpersonal cues—how readily your face, voice, or energy lets people around you know when you are upbeat, frustrated, or low. Emotional Sensitivity captures skill in receiving and decoding nonverbal emotional communication, such as watching how someone moves while they speak or picking up on subtle shifts in tone and interest in a crowded room. Emotional Control describes the ability to control and regulate emotional and nonverbal displays, like keeping a steady face during a tense moment or telling a humorous story without giving away the punchline too soon.

The remaining three scales turn to verbal communication and social situations. Social Expressivity covers a general verbal speaking skill used to engage others, showing up in how readily you start conversations, draw people in, and enjoy lively group interaction. Social Sensitivity reflects decoding and understanding verbal communication and norms of social behavior—how closely you tune in to what people are saying, how feedback lands on you, and what a given setting expects from the people in it. Finally, Social Control describes skill in social self-presentation and adapting behavior to a social situation, whether that means stepping in as the spokesperson for a group of friends or feeling comfortable talking with people from very different backgrounds.

In evaluation research on the revised 90-item SSI using two college-undergraduate descriptive samples of 453 and 199 participants, plus a two-week retest sample of 40 participants, individual scales showed internal-consistency coefficients ranging from .62 to .87 and two-week test-retest coefficients from .81 to .96, with total-score test-retest reliability reaching .94. Your six facet scores are also averaged into a single Total Social Skills score as a broad summary of your reported habits. Because this is a self-report profile rather than an objective ability test, higher expressivity or higher control is not automatically better in every moment; different settings call for different balances between openness and restraint.

This page shows your raw profile across six facets and a combined score. It does not compare you with population averages, so read the chart as a summary of how you answered rather than a ranking.

This test is provided for educational and self-reflection purposes only and is not a clinical or diagnostic assessment. It is based on the 90-item Social Skills Inventory (SSI) developed by Ronald E. Riggio, but this page is an independent educational tool and is not affiliated with its author, California State University, Fullerton, or the instrument's publisher.

References

• Riggio, R. E. (1986). Assessment of basic social skills. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(3), 649-660.
• Riggio, R. E. (1989). Using the Social Skills Inventory in Personnel Assessment. ERIC Document Reproduction Service.
• Conger, R. C. & Sheridan, S. M. (1992). Review of Social Skills Inventory. The Eleventh Mental Measurements Yearbook, pp. 842-845, Buros Institute of Mental Measurements.
• Schlegel, K. (2013). Improving the Measurement of Emotion Recognition Ability. University of Geneva doctoral thesis.

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