Measuring Emotional Intelligence as a Set of Mental Abilities

Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an individual's capacity to process emotional information in order to enhance cognitive activities and facilitate social functioning. It is defined as the perception, use, understanding, and management of one's own and others' emotional states to solve problems and regulate behaviour. This chapter argues that EI is best described as a set of abilities and therefore best measured by ability-based assessments. First, it presents an overview of EI theory. Second, the chapter describes the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), a theoretically derived and empirically validated assessment tool. Third, it reviews additional ability-based tools that assess a subset of the skills measured by the MSCEIT. Fourth, the chapter describes two alternative measurement approaches to EI assessment: self-judgement and information-processing tasks.

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