Emotional Intelligence Tests: The Four Backed by Real Research

Two Kinds of Emotional Intelligence

Psychologists measure emotional intelligence in two incompatible ways, and every test belongs to one camp. The ability model, set out by John Mayer and Peter Salovey in 1997, defines EI as four skills: perceiving emotions accurately, using them to aid thinking, understanding them and managing them. If EI is a skill, it should be tested like one, with items that have better and worse answers.

The trait model, developed by K. V. Petrides of University College London, treats EI as a set of emotional self-perceptions located at the lower levels of the personality hierarchy. If EI is a disposition, it should be measured like personality, by asking people about themselves. A third group, often called mixed models, blends skills, personality and motivation; Reuven Bar-On's model, the basis of the EQ-i, is the best known.

The split is not academic hair-splitting. In the MSCEIT 2 data, people's self-ratings and their ability scores barely correlated, and the two kinds of test predict outcomes differently. For how either relates to cognitive ability, see our companion piece on emotional intelligence versus IQ.

The Four Tests at a Glance

Each test below has a named author, a published manual or peer-reviewed validation, and a body of independent research. Other research instruments exist; these four represent the main approaches.

The MSCEIT: Emotional Intelligence as a Skill

The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test is the flagship ability measure. The original, labeled MSCEIT V2.0 in a 2003 validation paper, ran 141 items across eight tasks. It scored answers by consensus: an answer earned credit in proportion to the share of a reference group, a large general sample or a panel of emotion researchers, who chose it.

Its successor, the MSCEIT 2, was described by Mayer, Caruso, Salovey and colleagues in Frontiers in Psychology in June 2025. It has 94 items, 83 of them scored, across 12 question types in four domains: Perceiving, Connecting, Understanding and Managing emotions. A panel of eight PhD psychologists fixed the correct answers, and items without a clear answer were dropped. The normative sample was 3,000 adults, 2,700 in the United States and 300 in Canada.

The reported internal consistency was .88 overall, with the Connecting domain weakest at .56, a shortfall the authors acknowledge. The most striking finding concerns self-knowledge. People's ratings of their own emotional intelligence correlated -.07 with their MSCEIT 2 scores: essentially zero. On this evidence, believing you are emotionally intelligent and being so are separate matters.

The GECo: An Ability Test Built for Work

Katja Schlegel and Marcello Mortillaro introduced the Geneva Emotional Competence Test in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2019. It has four subtests. Emotion recognition uses video clips of actors. Emotion understanding, regulating one's own emotions and managing others' emotions use situational judgment items set in workplaces.

Across five studies with 888 participants, the subtests showed high measurement precision under item response theory and correlated as expected with other EI tests, cognitive ability and personality. In a professional sample the GECo predicted performance in computerized assessment-center tasks. Among students, it explained academic results beyond another ability EI test. Its research record is still shorter than those of the MSCEIT and the TEIQue.

The EQ-i 2.0: The Workplace Standard

The Emotional Quotient Inventory is published by Multi-Health Systems, which also publishes the MSCEIT. Reuven Bar-On, who coined the term EQ in 1985 according to MHS, built the original. Version 2.0 asks 133 brief questions on a five-point scale, takes 20 to 30 minutes and is designed for adults.

It reports a total score, five composites and 15 subscales. The composites are Self-Perception, Self-Expression, Interpersonal, Decision Making and Stress Management; the subscales range from Self-Regard and Assertiveness to Impulse Control and Optimism. Scores use the IQ metric, mean 100 and standard deviation 15, so a 115 sits one standard deviation above the norm, like an IQ of 115. The norms come from 4,000 adults across the United States and Canada, collected in 2010.

Because every answer is a self-description, the EQ-i measures how people see their own emotional functioning. That is useful for coaching conversations, and it is also its scientific weak point, as the job-performance research below shows.

The TEIQue: Emotional Intelligence as Personality

The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire is the purest measure of the trait model. The full form has 153 items rated on a seven-point scale, covering 15 facets, 13 of which group into four factors: Well-being, Self-control, Emotionality and Sociability. A 30-item short form takes about five minutes. Versions exist for adolescents, for children aged 8 to 12 and for 360-degree ratings by peers.

Its maker makes every form and translation free for academic research, which helps explain its reach in the literature. Adaptations have been validated in French, German, Serbian, Georgian and Catalan, among others. In a 2016 study of Catalan and English versions, Anton Aluja, Angel Blanch and Petrides reported internal consistency of .95 and .90 for the global score and replicated the four-factor structure across samples.

What the Evidence Shows

Two large meta-analyses set the boundaries of what these tests can claim.

School. Carolyn MacCann and colleagues pooled 158 studies of 42,529 students for Psychological Bulletin in 2020. Emotional intelligence correlated .20 with academic performance overall. Ability EI was strongest at .24, mixed EI followed at .19 and self-rated EI trailed at .12. After controlling for intelligence and the Big Five personality traits, the three kinds of EI added 1.7, 2.3 and 0.7 percent of explained variance. Real, but modest.

Work. Dana Joseph, Jing Jin, Daniel Newman and Ernest O'Boyle analyzed mixed EI measures in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2015. Mixed EI correlated .29 with supervisor-rated job performance. But its content overlapped heavily with conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, self-efficacy, self-rated performance, ability EI and general mental ability. Once those were controlled, the relationship fell to nil, a regression coefficient of -.02. On that evidence, self-report EI predicts performance largely because it repackages constructs psychology already measures.

The verdict: ability tests measure something distinct but modest; self-report tests measure something real but largely familiar. Neither supports the popular claim that EQ matters more than IQ.

Choosing and Reading a Test

• For a true skill measure, use an ability test such as the MSCEIT 2. Expect lower scores than your self-image predicts; that gap is the point.
• For coaching and self-reflection, a self-report such as the EQ-i 2.0 or TEIQue structures the conversation, but it reports perception, not performance.
• For hiring, the job-performance evidence argues against relying on self-report EI over established measures of personality and cognitive ability.
• For a free online quiz, check whether the publisher names an author and reports norms, reliability and validity. Without them, the number has no reference point.

None of these tests is a diagnosis or a measure of character. For cognitive ability itself, the free geniuses.club IQ test is a practice screener, and our guide to online test accuracy applies to EQ quizzes as much as IQ ones. Other frameworks for kinds of intelligence are covered in Gardner's multiple intelligences and the MBTI question; more lives in our IQ guides.

Editorial standard: IQ figures for historical figures are retrospective estimates and are labeled as such; scores for living people appear only when the person disclosed them or a reputable outlet reported them. Corrections: contact the editors.