Emotional intelligence test
See what each of the four emotional branches means, how it is scored, and how your result is read against the population that actually fits you.
Emotional intelligence is the set of capacities involved in recognising, understanding and managing emotions - your own and other people's - and using that to guide thinking and behaviour. This test measures emotional intelligence as a self-reported trait: how you typically handle emotions in everyday life, not your maximum performance on emotion problems with right and wrong answers.
The model
What it measures
Select a branch to see the emotional skills it draws on. The model organises emotional intelligence into four related areas - perceiving, using, understanding and managing emotions - and the test samples across them to produce an overall trait EI score together with a sense of your relative strengths. Each branch is the average of short statements rated on an agree-to-disagree scale.
Because this is a self-report measure, it captures your beliefs about your emotional skills and your typical style - which is exactly what predicts everyday wellbeing and social functioning - but it is not the same as an objectively scored ability test. Someone confident about their emotional skills and someone genuinely skilled both score high here, and the report is honest about that distinction.
Noticing and accurately reading feelings in yourself and in others through tone, expression and behaviour.
- PPerceiving emotions
Noticing and accurately reading feelings in yourself and in others through tone, expression and behaviour.
Facets: Self-awareness, Reading others, Emotional expression, Attention to feeling.
- UUsing emotions
Harnessing emotions to focus attention, motivate yourself and support clearer thinking and decisions.
Facets: Self-motivation, Mood and creativity, Channelling feeling, Emotional focus.
- NUnderstanding emotions
Grasping how emotions arise, blend and change over time, and what they signal about a situation.
Facets: Emotional vocabulary, Blends of feeling, Causes and transitions, Reading situations.
- MManaging emotions
Regulating your own feelings and responding constructively to the emotions of others, especially under stress.
Facets: Self-regulation, Stress management, Calming others, Constructive response.
The evidence
Science and validity
The four-branch model of emotional intelligence introduced by Mayer and Salovey gave the field its most influential framework, and self-report scales built on it - including the Schutte assessment and the TEIQue family this test follows - show good internal consistency and meaningful correlations with wellbeing, relationship quality and coping. Trait EI overlaps with established personality dimensions, particularly emotional stability, extraversion and agreeableness, and the most credible measures report incremental validity beyond those traits rather than claiming to be wholly separate.
A meta-analysis by Joseph and Newman found that emotional intelligence relates to job performance, with the relationship strongest in roles that demand high emotional labour. Two honest limits apply. First, self-report EI reflects how you see yourself, so it can be inflated by a flattering self-view; ability tests like the MSCEIT, which score performance on emotion tasks, measure something related but not identical. Second, this is an educational self-assessment, not a clinical instrument - it does not diagnose any condition and is not a substitute for professional input.
Where you stand
How a score becomes a percentile
A raw score only means something against a comparison group. For example, a Managing-emotions score of 3.9 sits near the 78th percentile against published English-speaking adult data - a stronger self-reported ability to regulate feeling than roughly three in four adults. Drag the slider to see how a score on each branch maps to a percentile; your real result is matched to the population that fits you when you take the test.
Your result, visualised across every dimension
Take the test once and see a full profile like this example, each dimension placed against the population most relevant to you, with plain-language interpretation.
See my full profile →Example profile shown for illustration.
The reference data
Benchmarked against the population that fits you
We benchmark your result against the population that actually resembles you, across 24 reference groups.
Each reference group is used as its own benchmark, not to rank one country against another.
How it works
What the questions feel like
Illustrative statements showing the style of the items. These are examples, not the official scored items.
I notice the mood of a conversation shifting before anyone names it.
Illustrative emotion-perception item (not a scored item).
When pressure rises, I can name what I am feeling and still act clearly.
Illustrative emotion-management item (not a scored item).
I can usually trace a mood back to the moment that set it off.
Illustrative emotion-understanding item (not a scored item).
I can use a good mood to push through work I have been putting off.
Illustrative emotion-using item (not a scored item).
Honest strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Built on the four-branch Mayer-Salovey model and the named, validated TEIQue trait-EI family, not on "eq test" hype.
- Short (about 7 minutes) and predicts everyday wellbeing, relationship quality and coping; relevant to roles with high emotional labour.
- Reports a clear overall trait-EI band with a percentile and a sense of relative strengths across the four branches.
Limitations
- It is a self-report of how you see your own emotional skills, so it can be inflated by a flattering self-view; an ability test like the MSCEIT measures something related but not identical.
- Trait EI overlaps with broad personality (especially emotional stability, extraversion and agreeableness), so a high score partly reflects those traits, not a wholly separate capacity.
- This is an educational self-assessment, not a clinical instrument; a low score is not a diagnosis and a high score is not a clean bill of emotional health.
See your full profile
A complete report, matched to the population that fits you, with plain-language interpretation of every trait.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a trait or an ability EI test?
It is a trait, self-report measure: you rate how you typically perceive and manage emotions, and the score reflects your self-perceived emotional functioning. Ability tests such as the MSCEIT instead score your performance on emotion problems that have correct answers. The two measure related but distinct things, and self-report cannot fully substitute for performance-based assessment.
What does my EI score actually mean?
Your score shows where your self-reported emotional skills place you relative to a population of other adults, reported as a percentile. A higher score suggests you generally notice, understand and regulate emotions more effectively in daily life. Because it is self-reported, read it as a structured reflection of your emotional style rather than a fixed measure of capacity.
Can I improve my emotional intelligence?
Yes, more so than many fixed traits. The component skills - reading emotions, regulating your own reactions, responding well to others - respond to deliberate practice, feedback, and in some cases coaching or therapy. Retaking the test after sustained effort can show whether your self-perception has shifted.
How is this different from a personality test?
Trait EI overlaps with broad personality traits, especially emotional stability, extraversion and agreeableness, but focuses specifically on the emotional domain. A test like the Big Five gives the wider trait picture, while this test zooms in on how you handle feelings. Many people find it useful to take both.
Related tests
- Kankaraš, M. (2017). Personality matters: Relevance and assessment of personality characteristics. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 157, OECD Publishing, Paris.
- Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence?. In P. Salovey & D. J. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence (pp. 3-31). Basic Books.
- Petrides, K. V., & Furnham, A. (2006). The role of trait emotional intelligence in a gender-specific model of organizational variables. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36(2), 552-569.
- Joseph, D. L., & Newman, D. A. (2010). Emotional intelligence: An integrative meta-analysis and cascading model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 54-78.
This independent informational page describes a trait emotional-intelligence self-report on the four-branch Mayer-Salovey model. TEIQue (Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire) is the work of K. V. Petrides, and MSCEIT is a trademark of its respective owner; both are named only to describe the measurement approach.