OVER VIEW OF THE MEASURES
Measurement of Ability EI
The most prominent measure of ability EI is the MSCEIT ( Mayer et al., 2002 ), although a number of alterna-
tives have been developed more recently. Because these tests adopt different methodologies in order to address
the task of creating items with emotional content that must be scored veridically, it is difficult to evaluate them
as a single class of instruments.
Broadly speaking, the main challenge that ability EI tests have to tackle is the inherent subjectivity of
emotional experience ( Watson, 2000 ). Unlike standard cognitive ability tests, tests of ability EI cannot be
objectively scored because in the vast majority of emotion-related domains there are no clear-cut criteria for
what may constitute a veridical response ( Matthews, Roberts, & Zeidner, 2004 ). Ability EI tests have tried to
bypass this problem by employing alternative scoring procedures, which had been used in the past for addres-
sing similar challenges in the operationalization of social intelligence, but without marked success ( O’Sullivan &
Ekman, 2004 ).
Less conventional procedures, such as ‘consensus’ and ‘expert’ scoring, attempt to engineer ‘correct’ responses
among a number of equally logical alternatives, but yield scores that are not fully interpretable psychologically.
Indeed, it has been pointed out that it is unclear whether such scores reflect a confound with vocabulary size
(Wilhelm, 2005 ), conformity to social norms ( Matthews et al., 2006 ), theoretical knowledge about emotions
(Austin, 2010 ), stereotypical judgments ( O’Sullivan, 2007 ), or some unknown combination, or even an interaction,
of some, or of all of these factors (see also Maul, 2012 ).
A range of other concerns have been highlighted in the literature, touching on conceptual, psychometric, and
empirical limitations. Core issues involve logical and conceptual inconsistencies, unstable factor structures, and
weak predictive validities (e.g., Brody, 2004; Fiori & Antonakis, 2011; Maul, 2012; O’Sullivan & Ekman, 2004;
Roberts, Zeidner, & Matthews, 2001 ). Such shortcomings have prompted the development of a new wave of
ability EI measures, some of which have sufficiently developed nomological networks to merit inclusion in
this chapter.
The MSCEIT is viewed as a comprehensive measure of ability EI, as it is based on the developers’ four-branch
model, which has essentially dominated the field. The LEAS, STEU, and STEM are more specific measures of par-
ticular areas associated with ability EI, developed to assess one of the four branches of Mayer and Salovey’s (1997)
model. These measures depart from the related MSCEIT tasks in their methods of measurement and scoring.
Similarly, the LEAS focuses on the measurement of emotional awareness, which is conceptually equivalent to
another branch of the same model. Like other measures of specific emotion-related skills, the first LEAS version
preceded the burst of EI measures, but more recent publications have situated the measure within the EI context.
Measurement of Trait EI
It is argued that the measurement of EI via self-report is more straightforward than through maximum-
performance, because only the former methodology is consistent with the subjective nature of emotional experi-
ences. Self-report measures of EI have generally avoided the pitfalls plaguing ability EI assessment and are much
more widely used in the scientific psychology literature. In general, they have higher internal consistencies, more
stable factor structures, and are grounded on established psychometric and mathematical models. Meta-analyses
have shown that self-report measures of EI outperform performance-based measures of EI by large margins (e.g.,
Martins et al., 2010; O’Boyle, Humphrey, Pollack, Hawver, & Story, 2011 ).
On the negative side, self-report measures have often neglected the theoretical aspects of construct operationa-
lization. Few of the current EI measures have been developed within a sound theoretical framework. In fact,
many authors continue to claim that such measures actually assess mental abilities, competencies, or skills, and
interpret their results accordingly. As mentioned above, this is psychometrically untenable, although this ten-
dency has softened over the years, as the theory of trait EI gained ground in the literature.
Trait EI (or trait emotional self-efficacy) is formally defined as a constellation of emotional self-perceptions
located at the lower levels of personality hierarchies ( Petrides, Pe ´rez-Gonza ´lez, & Furnham, 2007 ). The label does
not merely refer to variance captured by self-report questionnaires claiming to assess ‘EI’. Rather it explicitly
refers to a comprehensive conceptualization of the affective variance in the realm of personality as expressed in
the construct’s sampling domain ( Table 14.1 ). This point has direct implications both for the correct interpretation
of research findings as well as for meta-analyses adopting potentially flawed grouping practices based on purely
semantic criteria ( Pace & Brannick, 2010 ).383 OVERVIEW OF THE MEASURES
III. EMOTION REGULATION