An emotional intelligence test across four everyday skills

This emotional intelligence test looks at how you tend to notice, manage and respond to emotions, in yourself and in other people. It covers four areas: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. It takes about six minutes, is free to take and needs no sign-up.

Please note that this Expedition uses Selfcarta's own questions, which are not yet independently validated. It is a self-reflection tool, and it can't give you a measured EQ score.

What the test measures

The four areas build on each other, and most of us are stronger in some than in others.

Self-awareness

Do you tend to notice what you are feeling, and why? Naming "I'm not angry, I'm embarrassed" can change what you do next. Our page on emotional self-awareness goes into more depth.

Self-management

Once a feeling shows up, how do you tend to handle it? This covers things like cooling down before you reply, and getting yourself back on track after a setback.

Social awareness

Do you tend to pick up on how other people are feeling, even when they haven't said so? This covers noticing when a colleague has gone quiet, or when a friend's "I'm fine" isn't quite fine.

Relationship management

How do you tend to use all of this with other people? This covers raising hard things, offering support and repairing things after a clash.

The science behind it

Peter Salovey and John Mayer set out a framework for emotional intelligence in 1990. They described a set of skills: appraising and expressing emotion, regulating it, and using feelings to guide action.

The field has since divided. Mayer, Salovey and David Caruso describe a schism between researchers who treat emotional intelligence as a distinct set of mental abilities, and those who study a broader mix of positive traits such as optimism and self-esteem. So two tests with the same name may not measure the same thing.

It matters because of how the two approaches relate. Marc Brackett and colleagues compared self-ratings of emotional ability with a performance test, and in their first study the two were not strongly correlated. In other words, how good you think you are with emotions and how you do on a task may be quite different things.

The link to work is also more complex than popular accounts suggest. Dana Joseph and Daniel Newman's meta-analysis found that the relationship between ability-based emotional intelligence and job performance was inconsistent: it was positive for jobs with high emotional labour, and negative for jobs with low emotional labour.

So here is the honest position on our test. It is a self-report questionnaire. It asks how you tend to behave, it doesn't test your ability, and its four-part structure is a practical framework for reflection. Our questions are original, and they have not been independently validated. We don't make any accuracy claims for them.

Where others can help

Since self-ratings have these limits, other people's views can be especially useful here. How you come across might not match how it feels. You may think you hide your stress well, or you may underrate how much your friends feel supported by you.

Second Sight lets people who know you answer a 12-item version of the Emotional Intelligence Expedition. Friends, family and co-workers stay anonymous, and they are shown only as averages with at least two others. The Partner circle is a named, one-to-one comparison, and your partner is told that before they begin.

If you would like some gentle guidance on asking in person, read how to ask for honest feedback.

What you can do with your result

Skills like these can be practised in small ways.

• Pause and put a specific word on what you feel, more exact than "stressed"
• Before a tough conversation, ask yourself what the other person may be worried about
• After a clash, come back within a day and say one thing you would do differently

Start with your highest score, because that is a strength you can lean on, and then choose one small experiment from your lowest. You can also read our overview of emotional intelligence.