How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
Four different skills that people keep calling one thing
Emotional intelligence is not one thing you either have or do not. The research model breaks it into four separate skills, and most people are strong in two and weak in the others. Twenty statements will show you which two - and the weak ones are the good news, because they are learnable.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Be honest rather than generous. Emotional intelligence is one of the areas where people most consistently overrate themselves, and an inflated score tells you nothing useful.
What it measures
Four skills that build on each other: noticing emotions, using them to think better, understanding where they come from, and managing them in yourself and others.
Based on: Four-branch model of emotional intelligence (Mayer & Salovey)
Possible results
Noticing
Reading emotion accurately, in yourself and on other people's faces.
Using
Letting emotion inform thinking instead of hijacking it.
Understanding
Knowing where an emotion came from and where it is going next.
Managing
Steering an emotion without suppressing or being run by it.
Common questions
Can emotional intelligence be improved?
The four branches respond differently. Noticing and understanding improve fairly quickly with deliberate practice - naming emotions precisely, in writing, is the most evidence-backed exercise. Managing improves more slowly. Using is the one almost nobody trains, which makes it the cheapest gain available.
Is emotional intelligence more important than IQ?
No, despite a famous claim that it accounts for most of career success. Careful meta-analyses put its contribution to job performance at real but modest, and smaller than cognitive ability or conscientiousness. It matters most in roles built around other people.
What if my Managing score is low?
Start with reappraisal rather than suppression. When something lands badly, write down a second plausible explanation for it before you respond. Gross's research shows reappraisal lowers the emotional and physiological load while suppression lowers neither.
Sources
- Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality.
- Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2004). Emotional intelligence: Theory, findings, and implications. Psychological Inquiry.
- Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology.
An honest note Self-report is the weak point of every emotional intelligence questionnaire, including this one: the people least able to read emotion are also least able to notice that they cannot. Treat a high score as a hypothesis and check it against what people actually tell you.
Try one of these next
How Afraid of Failing Are You?
What exactly you are afraid will happen if it goes wrong
How Often Do You Get Into Flow?
Losing track of time at work, over the washing-up and in your free hours
Do You Believe in Free Will?
Choice, causes, fate and pure chance - and how much of each you think runs a life