What Is An Emotional Intelligence Test Used For?
Emotional intelligence can significantly impact various aspects of your life, including behavior in family, friendships, and workplace relationships. However, your romantic partnership often requires a deeper level of intimacy than many other types of connections. Thus, honing emotional skills can particularly help ensure healthy connection, understanding, and resilience. Learning to recognize and reflect on your own and your partner's moods, seeking open communication, and calmly answering concerns can rely on the development of emotional intelligence. These abilities enable you to focus on your partner's perspectives and create a strong team dynamic in facing life's challenges together.
What is emotional intelligence, and why does it matter?
Though the term has been only coined in the last century, the concept of emotional intelligence has ancient roots, dating all the way back to Plato and appearing in the Hindu text, The Bhagavad Gita.
Testing for emotional intelligence
To test for EI, researchers developed the Emotional Quotient (EQ). While many people have heard of IQ (Intelligence Quotient), which tests intellect and reasoning skills, the arguably lesser-known EQ can make a big difference in multiple areas of life.
Research suggests that higher EQ can positively impact work, social life, mental and physical health, and relationships. For example, individuals with higher emotional intelligence scores report more positive social relationships. Further, higher EI scores correlated to an individual’s workplace peer ratings of their interpersonal skills, stress tolerance, and leadership potential.
And EI can be highly critical to romantic relationships as well. One study showed that emotional intelligence alone explained 30% of changes in marital satisfaction. Further, it indicates a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and quality of life. In other words, if emotional intelligence increases, the quality of life may also improve.
It’s important to note that some people may experience difficulty in identifying and controlling their own emotions and those around them, such as some neurodivergent people and those experiencing anxiety or depression. This is completely normal, and there are still plenty of paths to successful work, social, and romantic relationships without a perfect EQ score.
Five domains of emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is not a vague concept. In fact, there are five components that make up the EI model and can help in improving EQ:
- Self-Awareness: Begin by being present and aware of your own feelings, reactions, responses, and abilities to behave and cope with positive and negative situations.
- Self-Regulation: It’s normal to experience intense emotions. However, self-regulation can help you calmly decide on how to manage your feelings and thought processes.
- Motivation: Staying motivated can help draw positivity in multiple groups of your life, like mental health, career, and interpersonal relationships. Motivation is crucial to emotional intelligence because it keeps an individual actively working toward positive outcomes.
- Empathy: Empathy allows an individual to be in tune with someone else’s emotions. Understanding or feeling what someone else feels can help you connect more deeply with others and seek to strengthen emotional bonds.
- Social Skills: Honing social skills is a key part of emotional intelligence. The ability to effectively speak and relate to others in a social setting is fundamental to a high EQ, enabling you to handle pressure and frequently undertake collaborative tasks with reliability.
How emotional intelligence impacts your relationship
So, with the five domains of EI in mind, how does EQ level affect your romantic relationship?
Helps with conflict management and resolution
At some point, conflict may arise in a relationship. However, this does not have to result in adverse outcomes. Instead, if all parties work on developing their EQ, then it’s more likely that conflict will be managed effectively.
By leveraging self-awareness, you can better understand your reactions to challenging situations and see your response's role in a conflict.
In practice, self-regulation can help you manage your emotions as you try to reach a resolution with your partner during a disagreement. This type of emotional control also can mitigate explosive reactions and de-escalate negative back-and-forth.
Improves active listening and fights closeness-communication bias
When romantic partners get to know each other well, they may experience something called closeness-communication bias. One scientific study states, “People commonly believe that they communicate better with close friends than with strangers. We propose, however, that closeness can lead people to overestimate how well they communicate, a phenomenon we term the closeness-communication bias.” In other words, romantic partners may believe they already know what the other is saying, but in reality, they are leaning on past experience to inform their conclusions instead of mindfully listening in the moment.
Emotional intelligence levels may help determine how effectively relationship partners are able to hone their active listening skills. By employing higher levels of empathy, individuals may be better equipped to actively listen to their partner and fight closeness-communication bias.
Closeness-communication bias can be significant to overcome, and speaking to a licensed relationship therapist can often support your progress as a couple as it relates to effective communication.
Motivates partners to put in the work for relationship success
Emotional intelligence may help you stay motivated to work through challenges with your partner so you can maintain a healthy relationship. However, it’s important to keep in mind that there are different types of motivation:
- Extrinsic motivation: This type of motivation comes from an external source that leads to a separable outcome, whether that outcome is to earn a reward or avoid punishment. For example, a student may be motivated to work late into the evening to finish homework to get a good grade. In another example, an employee may wake up an hour early to ensure they are on time for a meeting at the office to avoid being fired.
- Intrinsic motivation: Intrinsic motivation is defined as doing an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge an action entails rather than external prods, pressures, or rewards. For example, imagine an artist painting simply because they enjoy the creative satisfaction of the act.
It is healthy to incorporate a mixture of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in various areas of your life, but it is worth noting that intrinsic motivation correlates positively and significantly with variables that explain emotional intelligence. So, it can be helpful to take time to understand your intrinsic motivations alongside your partner. This could inspire action to put in effort toward relationship success consistently.
Strengthens the emotional bond
Higher levels of emotional intelligence can pave the way for a deeper bond with your partner. However, those who have high levels of emotional intelligence may be mistaken as simply "overemotional" or "too sensitive," according to emotional intelligence psychology. By recognizing your feelings, staying empathetic to your partner’s point of view, and self-regulating your own emotions, you will be more likely to successfully navigate the inevitable ups and downs of the relationship together.
Further, staying in touch with your intrinsic motivations as a unit can deepen your understanding of each other and maintain the desire for progress and positive outcomes.
How to develop your EQ
Emotional intelligence may play a vital role in your relationships, including your romantic partnership. You can continue to develop your EQ throughout your life –– it does not have to be set in stone. There are steps you can take to boost your emotional intelligence:
Start with mindful self-awareness
Practice recognizing your own emotions and naming them. How do you feel when stressful situations arise? Furthermore, what are your responses to emotionally difficult moments? Are you easily able to control your reactions and feelings? When you improve your self-awareness, you will likely be able to develop your EQ over time.
Consider online therapy for emotional control
Online therapy can help individuals who experience challenges controlling emotions. For example, one study demonstrated how online cognitive-behavioral therapy helped reduce stress and anxiety for college students.
Ask for feedback
Finally, monitoring your progress through feedback can be important. Ask your partner, family, friends, or co-workers about their thoughts on your emotional reactions to stressful situations, empathy level, flexibility, and capacity to handle conflict. A therapist can also provide feedback and guidance.
From the comfort of your own home, you can speak to a licensed therapist who can support your journey to better emotional control and a more developed EQ.
Takeaway
How do you test for emotional intelligence?
Researchers have developed a wide variety of emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) tests and assessment tools. Many of these have been validated by repeated studies, with high scores corresponding to a broad range of positive life and career outcomes.
Tests for emotional intelligence are often grouped into two broad categories:
- Tests measuring ability EI, a person’s capacity for things like recognizing emotions in others, predicting what someone else might feel in a specific situation, and anticipating another person’s emotional reactions to certain behaviors. An ability EI test often involves answering questions about hypothetical scenarios or solving emotion-related problems. For example, the test-taker might be asked to identify what a person in a photograph is feeling.
- Tests measuring trait EI, an individual’s tendency to display emotionally sensitive behavior in day-to-day life. Assessments of trait EI typically use a self-report framework, asking participants to answer questions about their typical behavior and emotional responses in various situations.
There are also “mixed EI” tests that incorporate both of the assessment types described above.
What is an emotional intelligence test used for?
Emotional intelligence testing is widely used to screen candidates for various jobs. Employers are often interested in figuring out which applicants are likely to be resilient, self-motivated, and good at cooperating with others, and many turn to EQ tests as a way to assess these traits.
Some organizations may also employ emotional intelligence assessments in training and professional development programs. These tools can be used to help employees understand their strengths and weaknesses, identifying potential areas for improvement as well as abilities that may currently be underutilized.
Individuals may also use emotional intelligence tools to guide their own self-improvement efforts. Since high scores on EQ tests are associated with measures of life satisfaction and well-being, these assessments can help people decide which emotional skills they should work on. It may be helpful to consult with a trained therapist for assistance with interpreting test results and devising strategies for personal improvement.
What are the 5 components of emotional intelligence tests?
Psychologists often divide emotional intelligence into several related abilities or traits. One of the most well-known classification schemes is the five-component model proposed by author and researcher Daniel Goleman. This framework describes EI as a combination of:
- Self-Awareness. Your ability to understand and identify your feelings, as well as how you tend to respond emotionally to various events and situations. For example, someone high in self-awareness would likely know what things tend to trigger anger in them, and how they typically respond. They might also be good at identifying when they’re getting annoyed or when outside factors like fatigue or stress are contributing to their mood.
- Self-Regulation. The capacity to moderate your responses, controlling your behavior even when you’re in the grip of strong emotions. High levels of self-regulation may enable people to act logically rather than impulsively.
- Motivation. In Goleman’s model, a strong ability to motivate yourself is part of emotional intelligence. People who score low on this trait may have difficulty keeping themselves on-task without external pressure such as an imminent deadline or an attentive supervisor. Those with strong internal motivation, on the other hand, may have a greater sense of the connection between their moment-to-moment efforts and their big-picture goals and values.
- Empathy. Empathy refers to the ability to understand the emotions of other people. This can include the ability to anticipate how they’ll respond to your actions. High levels of empathy may also help you address the feelings of others in ways that make them feel understood, valued, and respected.
- Social Skills. Social skills describe your ability to relate to and bond with other people. This can include competence in navigating conflict, building trust, finding compromises, and understanding the everyday give-and-take of relationships. In the Goleman framework, social skill also refers to the ability to make mutually beneficial use of personal connections.
Not all measurements of emotional intelligence use the five-component model. Many EI tests are based on different theoretical frameworks.
Is IQ test the same as emotional intelligence?
Some intelligence theorists believe that EI is simply one facet of the general intelligence factor measured by IQ tests. They point to studies showing that people with high IQ also tend to have high ability EI, meaning they perform well at tasks like controlling emotional impulses and recognizing the feelings of others.
The research is far from unanimous on this topic, though. For one thing, the correlation described above doesn’t apply to trait EI, which describes a person’s tendences and habits rather than their ability to think through emotional problems. There are also many studies that suggest emotional intelligence may be a distinct capability from IQ, even if the two sometimes overlap.
Why is EQ better than IQ?
EQ, also known as EI, may be a better predictor of a happy and fulfilling life than IQ. While IQ is often regarded as a measure of your ability to perform well in school or the workplace, it may not help as much with things like making beneficial connections or motivating yourself to succeed. Many psychologists believe there’s a stronger correlation between emotional intelligence and many aspects of overall well-being, including:
- Happiness in romantic relationships
- Career satisfaction
- Resilience in the face of stress
- Reduced risk of depression
This doesn’t necessarily mean that EQ is “better” than IQ. Both kinds of capabilities may have important benefits. EQ may help you recognize your goals and stay optimistic and motivated enough to pursue them. But IQ might be important for building the technical skills needed to achieve your aims.
What is the most common emotional intelligence test?
The most widely used and studied assessment of ability EI is the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, often abbreviated as MSCEIT. This test has been referenced in over 1500 peer-reviewed papers as a proxy for emotional intelligence skills.
For trait EI, the most commonly used test is the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, commonly known as the TEIQue. It’s a self-report based measurement designed to assess several different aspects of emotional competence. The full version of this test consists of 153 questions, but there’s also a short-form version with just 30 items, designed for more rapid use.
What are the 4 skills needed for emotional intelligence?
The four “branches” of ability EI, as defined by the MSCEIT test, are as follows:
- Perceiving Emotions — Recognizing what you and other people are feeling, and identifying the emotional tone of creative works like stories or songs.
- Using Emotions to Facilitate Thinking — Deliberately calling on certain feelings to aid communication or other cognitive tasks.
- Understanding Emotions — Comprehending how emotions relate to different events and situations, including how a person’s feelings can change in response to your actions.
- Managing Emotions — Being able to accept your own feelings but regulate your responses to them when necessary.
Why is it important to test emotional intelligence?
Testing EI may help you better understand your own approach to relationships, self-motivation, and managing challenging feelings. This may help you understand why you’ve had difficulties in some areas of your life and what you could do to achieve better outcomes.
Emotional intelligence testing may also be helpful for people in leadership positions interested in assessing prospective hires or better managing their staff. An effective EI measurement could help you understand how well employees or job candidates will be able to regulate their emotions, communicate with others, and motivate themselves to succeed at difficult tasks.
What are the 4 pillars of emotional intelligence?
While there are many competing models of emotional intelligence, many theorists and psychologists use a model based on Daniel Goleman’s pioneering work. This approach breaks EI down into four “pillars”, “quadrants”, or “components”:
- Self-Awareness. The ability to recognize your own emotions and how they’re affecting your thinking.
- Self-Management. The ability to control your impulsive reactions to strong feelings. This pillar also includes your skill at regulating your emotions — for example, how well you’re able to let go of unproductive anger.
- Social Awareness. The ability to correctly assess interpersonal dynamics, read other people’s emotions, and put yourself in someone else’s shoes.
- Relationship Management. The ability to work with the emotions of others in order to bond with, inspire, or influence them.
How accurate are emotional intelligence tests?
Accurately measuring emotional intelligence can be difficult, since the question of what feelings are “best” or “most appropriate” in a specific situation is inherently somewhat subjective. It’s also hard to say how valid a specific test is without some other measurement of EI to compare it against.
However, as we discussed above, high scores on EI tests do show strong correlations with many important measurements of personal happiness and well-being. This strongly suggests that these assessments may be capturing something important about how the people taking them approach life and relate to the people around them.
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