What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is the ability to notice and tell apart your own feelings and other people's, and to use that information to guide how you think and act. It's often shortened to EQ. Feeling a knot in your stomach before a job interview, recognizing it as nerves and then deciding how to work with it is an ordinary example.
The modern definition goes back to 1990, when Peter Salovey and John Mayer published a paper describing it as the ability to monitor emotions, tell them apart and let that information guide thinking. The idea caught on in schools and workplaces after Daniel Goleman's 1995 book Emotional Intelligence.
The best-known framework is the five-part model that Goleman's books made popular: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. The first three are about your relationship with yourself, and the last two are about how you deal with other people. That split matters when you read your results, because someone who handles their own feelings well but struggles to read others can get the same total as someone who's the reverse.
What does this EQ test measure, and how many questions does it have?
This EQ test measures how you see yourself in each of the five areas, using 15 questions. Ten are short statements that you rate on a five-point scale. The other five are everyday scenarios, like a report that gets deleted right before it's due or a friend who suddenly goes quiet, and you pick what you'd do.
Some statements are deliberately worded in reverse. Answering "Very much like me" to "I find it hard to put my feelings into words" lowers your self-awareness score, for example, which stops someone who taps the same answer every time from scoring high. The scenarios don't have a single right answer either; each option is worth a different number of points.
To be upfront: this isn't a diagnostic or clinical tool. It measures your own view of your emotional skills, and plenty of people see themselves as a bit calmer or more patient than they are, so answer based on how you've actually behaved lately. Like the other personality tests on this site, it's a starting point for getting to know yourself.
What is the difference between IQ and EQ?
IQ describes mental skills like reasoning and problem solving, while EQ describes the ability to recognize emotions and handle them. They're also measured differently. On an IQ test, every question has a right answer. Most emotional intelligence tests online, this one included, are self-report scales where you describe yourself and nothing is right or wrong, although ability tests like the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) do use tasks with correct answers.
The two get pitted against each other a lot, but they answer different questions. The subtitle of Goleman's book claims emotional intelligence can matter more than IQ, and people have argued about that ever since. If you're quick at logic puzzles but slow to cool down after you lose your temper, the useful thing to know is where you stand on each.
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What does your EQ test score mean?
Your total shows where your answers land on a scale from 0 to 100, though the gaps between the five areas usually tell you more. The total is the average of the five area scores, and it falls into one of four levels: below 40 is Developing, 40 to 59 is Moderate, 60 to 79 is High, and 80 or above is Very high. These cutoffs weren't drawn from a population average, so this test can't tell you what a "normal" EQ is.
Someone high in empathy but low in self-regulation feels other people's sadness keenly and can wear down quickly carrying it. Someone high in self-awareness but low in social skills knows exactly what they feel and gets stuck saying it. Put your highest and lowest areas side by side and think about where they meet in your daily life.
Self-report scales also overlap with personality. An introvert with good communication skills may still rate themselves lower on items about starting conversations, so read your personality test result next to this one. If your score came out very high, ask someone who knows you well, "What am I like when I'm angry?"
What are the signs of high emotional intelligence?
People with high emotional intelligence notice their feelings early and don't let those feelings make their decisions for them. That doesn't mean they never get angry or hurt. Picture someone criticized in a meeting who says, without raising their voice, "Let me think about that and get back to you." They still feel the sting, and they save the conversation anyway.
You can spot these people by small things. They admit mistakes without a long defense, and when they listen, they don't steer the conversation back to themselves. When a friend goes unusually quiet, they wonder whether it means something and ask. When they have to say no, they say it clearly and kindly. These are simple habits, and most get easier with practice.
How can you improve your emotional intelligence?
Emotional skills tend to grow through small habits repeated regularly. Naming your feelings is a sensible place to start. "I feel bad" is vaguer than "I feel hurt" or "I'm worn out", and the precise version makes it clearer what to do next. Hurt calls for a conversation. Being worn out calls for sleep.
The simplest tool for self-regulation is a short pause. Taking a few breaths before you answer and leaving an angry late-night text in your drafts until morning are two versions of the same idea: let the first wave of feeling pass, then decide. Pausing is different from burying the feeling. Swallowed anger doesn't always go away, and it can come out days later at someone who had nothing to do with it.
Ordinary conversations are the best place to practice empathy and social skills. Putting your phone down and hearing someone out can change the tone of a whole conversation. Most of us feel a strong urge to offer solutions when someone shares a problem, but the other person usually wants to feel understood first.
With motivation, the size of the goal matters most. A big resolution like "I'm going to work really hard this semester" tends to fall apart at the first setback, while "twenty minutes every evening" is doable even on a bad day. Pick one exercise for a weaker area from your results page, stick with it for two or three weeks, then retake the test and see what moved.
