One concern that people raise about an ability approach to testing emotional intelligence is that intelligence tests assume that there are right and wrong answers. Yet, how can a feeling be correct or incorrect?
Take the example of assessing how accurate a person is in identifying the emotions of other people. Consider a person who has a huge smile on her face. Her eyes are twinkling, her mouth is upturned in a big smile, and she is laughing. How is this person feeling? If you were to say “angry” because you felt that it is possible that the person is angry, you would most likely be wrong.
Not all emotional intelligence test items can be scored in this manner, but many certainly can be.