We tested links between social status and emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) with participants from a diverse array of cultures and a new model and method of ERA, the Assessment of Contextualized Emotion (ACE), which incorporates social context and is linked to different types of social interaction across cultures. Participants from the Czech Republic (Study 1) and from 12 cultural groups in Europe, North America, and Asia (Study 2) completed a short version of the ACE, a self-construal scale, and the MacArthur Subjective Social Status (SSS) scale. In both studies, higher SSS was associated with more accuracy. In Study 2, this relationship was mediated by higher independent self-construal and moderated by countries' long-term orientation and relational mobility. The findings suggest that the positive association between higher social class and emotion recognition accuracy is due to the use of agentic modes of socio-cognitive reasoning by higher status individuals. This raises new questions regarding the socio-cultural ecologies that afford this relationship.

Católica Porto Business School Universidade Católica Portuguesa Porto Portugal

Department of Clinical Psychology Faculty of Medicine Academy of Silesia Katowice Poland

Department of Psychology Bilkent University Ankara Turkey

Department of Psychology Humboldt University Berlin Germany

Department of Psychology Palacký University Olomouc Czechia

Department of Psychology Sabanci University Istanbul Turkey

Department of Social and Developmental Psychology Sapienza University of Rome Rome Italy

Faculty of Lifelong Learning and Career Studies Hosei University Tokyo Japan

Institute of Psychology University of Silesia in Katowice Katowice Poland

Medical School University of Crete Rethymno Greece

National University of Ireland Maynooth School of Business Maynooth Ireland

Polish Academy of Science Branch in Katowice Committee of psychological Sciences Katowice Poland

Psychology Department California State University San Bernardino California United States of America

Psychology Department Fudan University Shanghai China

Psychology Department Karnatak University Dharwad India

Psychology Department Otto Friedrich University Bamberg Bamberg Germany

Psychology Department University of the Basque Country San Sebastián Spain

School of Psychology Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki Greece

School of Psychology University of Sussex Brighton United Kingdom

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