Whether superiors or subordinates are more accurate in assessing the emotions of others (aka emotion recognition accuracy, ERA) is a question that has gained much interest but yielded decidedly mixed empirical results. The present study investigates whether superiors and subordinates who are in an actual hierarchical relationship differ in their ERA. We investigated 142 superiors who each had recruited one of his or her direct subordinates (total N = 284). Superiors and subordinates each took a paper-pencil version of a standardized ERA test. Results showed that superiors were more accurate in assessing the emotions of other persons than subordinates were.