The BESSI · Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory
Personality tests describe who people tend to be. The BESSI measures what they can do, and what they can learn to do better.
The BESSI is a peer-reviewed inventory of 32 social, emotional, and behavioral skills, developed by research psychologists at Colby College and the University of Illinois. Soefia partners with those universities and the BESSI Lab to bring this science-based skill framework to the workplace, so leaders can build development plans around skills people can actually grow.
BESSI© 2024 by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois and The Board of Trustees of Colby College. All Rights Reserved.
Skills vs. traits
Most workplace personality tests measure traits, preferences, or drives: a person’s typical way of behaving. The BESSI measures skills: a person’s capacity to behave a certain way when the situation calls for it. The difference decides what you can do with the results.
| Comparison | Personality trait | Skill |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What do you usually do? | What can you do when it matters? |
| Describes | Your default, averaged across situations | Your capacity, available when you need it |
| Example | Introverted and quiet | Leads a meeting and speaks persuasively |
| Change | Slow, and hard to change on purpose | Improves with practice and feedback |
| At work | Self-awareness and team conversations | Development plans, coaching, and measurable growth |
Traits are “how someone tends to behave.” Skills are “how they are capable of behaving.”
Learnable and teachable
Ask how to change a personality trait and most people will say they don’t know, or that you can’t. Ask how to change a skill and they will say: practice. That intuition is backed by research, and it is why the BESSI is built for development rather than labeling.
For employees
A type or a trait profile describes who you are. A skill profile shows where you are today and what to practice next. People are also more motivated to improve skills than to change their personality.
For managers and coaches
“Be more extraverted” is not coachable. “Build conversational skill and persuasive skill” is. Each of the 32 facets names a concrete behavior to practice.
For L&D and HR
Skills change, so you can measure before and after a program and see whether it worked. Trait measures are built to stay stable, so they make poor yardsticks for learning.
For the organization
Treating behavior as skill assumes people can grow. That supports internal mobility, reskilling, and redeployment instead of sorting people by fixed type.
The BESSI framework
Social, emotional, and behavioral skills are the capacities people use to maintain relationships, regulate emotions, manage goals, and learn from experience. Like other skills, they can be learned, practiced, measured, and improved over time.
Pursuing goals and completing tasks.
Engaging with others, one-on-one and in groups.
Overlaps with Self-Management
Keeping relationships positive and productive.
Overlaps with Self-Management
Regulating emotions and moods.
Overlaps with Self-Management
Creating, engaging with, and learning from new ideas.
Overlaps with Self-Management
Skills that combine several domains.
Compound skills draw on several domains at once.
Scientific grounding
The BESSI was introduced in 2022. It sits within a research program that now spans dozens of peer-reviewed articles, multiple countries, and several languages.
The BESSI team summarizes this in its Cumulative Practice Model: deliberate practice is the key ingredient in skill development.
Social, emotional, and behavioral skills change over time within individuals, and the quality of people’s experiences predicts that change.
Napolitano et al., 2025; Sewell et al., 2026
A weekly behavioral-challenge intervention helped people practice and improve their skills.
Soto et al., 2026, “Practice makes perfect,” European Journal of Personality
Gains in skills are linked with gains in important outcomes, whether the growth happened naturally or on purpose.
Napolitano et al., 2025, European Journal of Personality
People want to improve their skills more than they want to change their traits, and believe skill change is more feasible.
Feraco, Hudson & Soto, 2025; Feraco et al., 2026
Full list of publications: sebskills.com/our-research
Comparing assessments
If you are choosing a personality test or behavioral assessment for your team, start with what you want to do with the results. To describe preferences and tendencies, a personality instrument may fit. To build skills and track growth, you need a skills measure.
| Feature | BESSI | Myers-Briggs (MBTI) | Hogan | Predictive Index (PI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measures | 32 social, emotional, and behavioral skills: what a person can do | Personality preferences: how people direct energy, take in information, and make decisions | Personality: the “bright side, dark side, and inside” | Four behavioral drives: Dominance, Extraversion, Patience, Formality |
| Result | Skill levels across 5 domains and 32 facets | One of 16 types | Personality profiles and reports | A behavioral pattern based on drive levels |
| Underlying idea | Skills: capacities that grow with practice | Preferences: there is no best type | Personality traits | Drives that create needs and shape behavior |
| Built for development | Yes. Each facet is a concrete skill to practice, and scores can be re-measured to show growth | Self-awareness and personal development | Self-awareness and leadership development | Understanding work styles and team fit |
| Science | Peer-reviewed: introduced in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2022), with an ongoing published research program | Publisher research and technical materials | Publisher cites predictive validity research | Publisher research and technical materials |
| Publisher guidance | Free for non-commercial use; commercial use is licensed | Publisher states it “should never be used in recruitment or selection” | Marketed for hiring and leadership development | Marketed for hiring and managing teams |
Descriptions of other assessments summarize each publisher’s own public materials as of October 2026: The Myers-Briggs Company, Hogan Assessments, The Predictive Index. Soefia makes no representation about these tests, and this is not intended as an evaluation of those products. Users should make their own independent evaluations.
Personality instruments can be useful for self-awareness and for helping teams talk about working styles. Even the Myers-Briggs publisher notes that the MBTI does not measure skills or abilities.
When you want to know what people can do today, what to develop next, and whether development worked. Many organizations use both: personality for self-understanding, skills for growth and talent decisions.
FAQ
The Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI) is a peer-reviewed assessment of 32 social, emotional, and behavioral skills, organized into five domains: Self-Management, Social Engagement, Cooperation, Emotional Resilience, and Innovation, plus three compound skills. It was developed by research psychologists at Colby College and the University of Illinois and introduced in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2022.
No. Personality tests measure traits: how someone tends to behave across situations. The BESSI measures skills: how well someone can behave a certain way when a situation calls for it. Skills and traits are related, but skills can be practiced and improved, and they predict important outcomes beyond what personality traits predict.
A trait is your default, the way you usually behave when nothing in particular is required of you. A skill is your capacity, what you can do when it matters. An introverted person can be a skilled public speaker. Traits set the center of a person’s range of behavior, and skills determine how effectively they can move away from it on purpose.
Yes. Research on the BESSI shows these skills change over time, that people’s experiences predict that change, and that a structured practice intervention helped people improve. Deliberate practice is the key ingredient.
For development and talent decisions, yes. The MBTI sorts people into one of 16 types based on preferences, and its publisher states it does not measure skills or abilities and should never be used in recruitment or selection. The BESSI measures 32 skills that can be developed and re-measured over time.
Hogan assessments are personality assessments used for hiring and leadership development. The BESSI measures skills rather than personality, so results point to specific capacities a person can practice and improve, and growth can be tracked over time.
The Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment measures four behavioral drives: Dominance, Extraversion, Patience, and Formality. The BESSI measures 32 learnable skills across five domains, so it shows what people can do and what to develop next, rather than what drives them.
These tools describe styles, preferences, talents, or types. If your goal is self-awareness, they may be useful. If your goal is to develop people and measure whether they grew, look for an assessment of skills, such as the BESSI.
The BESSI is free for non-commercial uses such as research and personal use. Commercial use requires permission. Soefia partners with the BESSI Lab to offer BESSI-based skill frameworks for workplace use.
Talk with Soefia about using the BESSI in your organization.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are trademarks of The Myers-Briggs Company. Hogan is a trademark of Hogan Assessment Systems. The Predictive Index and PI are trademarks of The Predictive Index. DISC, CliftonStrengths, Enneagram, and 16Personalities are trademarks of their respective owners. Soefia is not affiliated with these companies.
