Undoubtedly, you have heard many times about IQ and its effect on people’s intelligence, but do you think that IQ is the only determining factor that shows whether a person is smart to do something or not?
You may be surprised, but apart from IQ, there is another test called EI, or emotional intelligence, which is more important than IQ!
IQ tests evaluate people’s cognitive ability; EI tests, on the other hand, are more complex and measure people’s ability to manage and control their emotions.
If you want to know more about EI, this article is for you. In this article, we provide you with all the information and details you need about Emotion Intelligence tests. So, keep on reading!
Definition of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence, or EI (also known as emotional quotient, EQ), is the ability to control and manage your emotions and feelings, use your emotions to reduce your stress, communicate effectively with others, alleviate conflicts, and overcome different challenges in life.
Emotional intelligence consists of 5 parts: self-awareness, empathy, social skills, self-management, and motivation, which we will explain below.
- Self-awareness
Self-awareness means controlling your emotions and adapting to changes and problems. And you can recognize your feelings and how they would affect others.
- Empathy
This feature is significant for leading teams; with this feature, you can understand the feelings of others, put yourself in their place and help them in this way.
- Social skills
Social skills are one of the characteristics of people with high emotional intelligence; this feature is the ability to communicate with others, build a team and manage relationships.
- Self-management
Self-management is controlling emotions, especially in stressful and challenging situations. People who lack self-management cannot stay positive in difficult situations and find appropriate solutions.
- Motivation
Motivation is the ability to set goals, strive to achieve them, remain committed to goals, creativity, innovation, and positive thinking.
The critical point is that being smart doesn’t mean inevitable success in life; you may have seen many people who are very smart academically but unsuccessful in their social and personal relationships. Therefore, IQ does not indicate people’s intelligence and does not guarantee their success in life.
Emotional intelligence is more important than high IQ and plays a significant role in people’s success, which you cannot deny.
What is the Emotional Intelligence test
As mentioned earlier, IQ tests assess an individual’s cognitive abilities, while the EQ test is a psychological assessment that evaluates a person’s thinking abilities and emotions in different situations.
This kind of test does not necessarily determine the personality type and behavior. Generally speaking, emotional intelligence is a term that means people’s ability to recognize and manage their feelings and emotions.
Emotional Intelligence tests measure behavioral traits and skills; some of these skills include emotional reasoning, authenticity, self-regulation, understanding emotions, internal motivation, social skills, positive outlook, organizational awareness, teamwork, leadership, emotional self-control, etc.
There are four types of emotional intelligence which are as follows:
Ability-based tests:
This EQ test, such as the MEIS assessment, evaluate a person’s emotional “ability” in the same way IQ tests measure cognitive ability. Although not all the EQ tests are the same, the ability-based EI ratings have similar characteristics to IQ tests.
Competency-based tests:
This test is an online, performance-based test designed to measure individual differences in emotional intelligence (EI).
Trait-based tests:
The trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire is a self-reported assessment that comprehensively covers the domain of emotional intelligence traits.
Behavior-based tests:
These types of emotional intelligence tests evaluate people’s behavioral characteristics. For example, it considers the ability to understand and identify their personal behaviors and others.
What is the use of emotional intelligence tests?
Emotional intelligence evaluation tests can have various reasons; people can do these tests themselves to understand their skills according to emotional intelligence and to be aware of their personality traits.
Also, some schools or colleges use these tests as entrance exams to evaluate students’ abilities and skills.
Employers and hiring managers are now using emotional intelligence tests to make the hiring process easier and faster.
As you know, hiring people from numerous candidates is complex, and managers want to hire the best people to help their businesses grow.
Companies may do different ways to hire their employees and ask candidates to do different tests and interviews in order to select and hire the best people.
It is said that more than 70% of hiring managers believe that emotional intelligence tests are more important and efficient than IQ tests in the hiring process and help them make the right decision about hiring.
Because having a high emotional intelligence helps employees to perform better in the work environment and to overcome difficult situations more easily and provide better solutions for possible problems and crises.
Emotional intelligence tests also help hiring managers and employers make better decisions to select people for each job position and hire more skilled people.
Top emotional intelligence tests
You must have realized the importance and application of emotional intelligence tests by now; in this section, we will review some of the best EQ tests.
- Very well’s EQ test
This test is one of the important EQ tests designed and developed by author and educator Kendra Cherry.
It consists of 10 questions designed to answer them, meaning you must choose the answer among multiple options. Very well’s EQ test evaluates how emotionally intelligent you are.
When you finish answering all 10 questions, you will redirect to a screen that indicates whether you have high or low emotional intelligence.
- Harvard business review EQ test
This test will help you develop the right mindset and encourage you to answer the statements as honestly as possible. This test includes 25 questions; when you finish the test, you can use the results to see if you need any improvement in your skills or not.
Another strength of the Harvard business review test is that it encourages you to get others’ opinions as well, which will help you know your strengths better.
- Psychology tools’s EQ test:
The Psychology Tool’s EQ was developed from 2004 to 2013. This test is a 60-item questionnaire that asks a variety of questions.
Each question has multiple options which ask whether you fully agree, tend to agree, tend to disagree, or completely disagree with the statement. Therefore, there are no right or wrong answers and no “trick questions” in this test.
- Global Emotional Intelligence Test:
The Global Emotional Intelligence Test contains 40 multiple-choice questions. This test is a psychological test that requires you to choose one option from each pair of statements that best describes you. For each pair of statements, choose the statement that best describes you.
Try to be honest with yourself and choose the statement that is closest to you and your thoughts. Note that, if the questions are very similar, and you can’t decide which option best describes you, you can come back to that question after answering others.
- MindTools test:
The MindTools EQ Test is very easy to use and is one of its strengths. This test consists of 15 questions and asks you to evaluate who you really are, not what you think you should be. The answer scale ranges from “not at all” to “very common,” You need to choose the option that best describes you.
When you finish the test, you will fall into one of the three categories based on your answers.
– You have good emotional intelligence
– Your emotional intelligence is somehow good
– You need to work on yourself
Undoubtedly, you can find and use other tests in this field. Here are 5 of the best, and some of them are free to use.
Tips to improve your emotional intelligence
There are ways to help you score high on emotional intelligence tests and improve your EQ skills. In the following, we provide you with the most important points.
- Be responsible for your feelings, and don’t be ashamed of them
- Pay attention to how you behave in different situations
- Observe how you feel about yourself and your thoughts
- Try to stay and think positive
- Handle the negative thoughts and coincidences in life
- Discover what motivates you
- Love yourself, and take it easy!
- Trust your feelings and emotions
- Don’t get mad over small things
- Set personal goals and try to achieve them
- Dream on, but still, be realistic
- Get yourself prepared to leave your comfort zone
- Try to build healthy relationships
- Put yourself in someone’s else shoes to better understand them
- Avoid drama
- Stop complaining; instead, step forward
- Don’t overthink the past, present, and future
- Think before you say something
- Try to say less and do more
- Learn from your mistakes and try to avoid doing them again
Some other tips and solutions will help you in this way, but by using and doing these few simple tips, you can notice a change in your behavior and an increase in your emotional intelligence.
You also need to know that all these tips are based on the five parts of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, empathy, social skills, self-management, and motivation, as we explained earlier.
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence helps people in life and greatly impacts the quality of life. It helps you control and manage your emotions, make the right decisions in critical situations, perform better in job positions, and is generally considered a determining factor in success.
Therefore, knowing your emotional intelligence level and how you can improve it to take advantage of its benefits is important.
In this article, we talked about emotional intelligence and its tests comprehensively, introduced the best emotional intelligence tests, and provided you with great tips that you can use in your daily life and enjoy its benefits.
