Friday, January 25, 2008

Emotional Intelligence - A Quick Test

A fad that swept through the field of psychology some years ago captured everyone's attention: EQ. Emotional intelligence is the supposedly touchy-feely construct that captures to what extent you're an insensitive clod. We're not talking about whether you are a jerk, but whether you just don't know any better because your emotional aptitude is stunted. Unlike intelligence testing, which has a long and sordid history wrapped up in eugenics, emotional intelligence is a relatively new construct free of any genetic, just-born-that-way junk. Supposedly, your EQ is a better predictor of job success than IQ. How about that?

Want to get a rough idea of what your EQ is, take a test here.
Note: It's not the actual, carefully standardized test the developers, Jack Mayer and Peter Salovey, created.

7 comments:

EcoGeoFemme said...

Mine is 106, or "slightly below average".

Alasdair said...

That's kinda odd - I thought 100 was supposed to be average. I think you got ripped off, e-g-f.

Unlike the other kind of Q test, I felt a little fish-out-of-water-ish on that one... did pull a 120, though.

Livy said...

Very interesting - your blog is always so thought provoking. I am off to take the test.

Field Notes said...

I took the test too, and was pleased to see that it does retain elements of the 'real' test.

The sections in reading emotions from faces is particularly good.

However, I doubt the validity of the other sections. For instance, just because you recognize that you should wait until you and the other person is relaxed before discussing an upsetting topic, that doesn't mean that you will actually do it. Actually doing it, that is the emotionally intelligent thing to do.

I think if the test measured *actual* behavior, we would all score even lower.

KieutiePie said...

OH I had to do that before for a class. I already forgot everything about it. D'oh!

miznyc said...

Mine is 128. Apparently my EI is good. I'm kind of a people person and think I read people and myself pretty well.

Interesting once again H!

yellowfish said...

That was interesting!

I especially liked the section with the pictures-- I don't know much about emotional intelligence measures since its totally out of my area, but that seemed a lot like a measure of theory of mind, which I guess must relate. I agree with you, though, that section on rating how successful some things would be could be high just if you knew what you were supposed to say. I guess thats why I liked the picture section... fun!