"High EQ" gets used as a compliment for everything from good listening to smooth office politics. In research, emotional intelligence has a narrower meaning: how you perceive, use, understand, and manage emotion in yourself and others.
This guide explains how our emotional intelligence test works and why it deliberately leaves out the number most EQ quizzes lead with.
An emotional intelligence test measures how a person perceives, uses, understands, and manages emotion in themselves and others. This test administers two separate self-report instruments: the 33-item Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (1998), scored as a single global total, and the 16-item Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (2002), which reports four subscales. Self-report emotional intelligence measures beliefs about one's own emotional functioning, which is distinct from a measured emotional ability.
Two scales, never merged
The test administers two separate published instruments: the 33-item Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (1998), scored as one overall total, and the 16-item Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (2002), which reports four facets. They were built on different models, so they are scored separately and never averaged. Seeing whether they agree is more informative than either alone.
Why there is no EQ percentile
An honest percentile needs a current, representative comparison group, and neither instrument has one for a general web audience. Your Schutte total is described against the mean the original authors published for their own 1990s samples — a reference point, not a ranking. Any site offering a precise EQ percentile from a short quiz is using norms it has not shown you, or inventing them.
Self-reported EQ is not the same as emotional skill
These scales measure how you describe your own emotional functioning. Self-report EQ correlates more strongly with personality traits — especially Extraversion and Emotional Stability — than with demonstrated skill at reading or managing emotion. They also have few or no reverse-worded items, so agreeing with everything inflates scores.
The most useful check is simple: ask two people who know you well to rate you on the same facets and compare.
Expect it to move
EQ self-report is noticeably state-dependent. A difficult few weeks will move these scores in a way it would not move your Big Five. Watch the pattern across retakes rather than any single number — and if things have been hard lately, our guide to self-compassion may be more useful right now.