In studies with business managers, tacit-knowledge scores correlated in the range of .2 to .4 with criteria such as salary, years of management experience, and whether or not the manager worked for a company at the top of the Fortune 500 list (Wagner, 1987; Wagner and Sternberg, 1985). Wagner and Sternberg (1990) obtained a correlation of .61 between tacit knowledge and performance on a managerial simulation, and found that tacit-knowledge scores explained additional variance beyond overall cognitive ability and other personality and skill measures. In a study with bank branch managers Wagner and Sternberg (1985) obtained significant correlations between tacitknowledge scores and average percentage of merit-based salary increase (r = .48, p < .05) and average performance rating for the category of generating new business for the bank (r = .56, p <.05).

Williams and Sternberg (cited in Sternberg et al., 1995) also found that tacit knowledge was related to several indicators of managerial success, including compensation, age-controlled compensation, level of position, and job satisfaction, with correlations ranging from .23 to .39.

Although much of the tacit-knowledge research has involved business mangers, there is evidence that tacit knowledge explains performance in other domains. In the field of academic psychology, correlations in the .4 to .5 range were found between tacit-knowledge scores and criterion measures such as citation rate, number of publications, and quality of department (Wagner, 1987; Wagner and Sternberg, 1985). In studies with salespeople, Wagner et al. (1994) found correlations in the .3 to .4 range between tacit knowledge and criteria such as sales volume and sales awards received. Finally, tacit knowledge for college students was found to correlate with indices of academic performance and adjustment to college (Williams and Sternberg, cited in Sternberg et al., 1993).

In summary, the program of tacit-knowledge research reviewed above shows that generally tacit knowledge increases with experience, but is not simply a proxy for experience; that tacit-knowledge tests measure a distinct construct from that measured by traditional, abstract cognition tests; that scores on tacit-knowledge tests represent a general factor, which appears to correlate across domains; and finally, that tacit knowledge tests are predictive of performance in a number of domains, and compare favorably with those obtained for overall cognitive ability within the range of skills we have tested.