Yes. A high EQ score can coexist with harmful workplace behavior because an EQ measure captures a defined ability, self-belief, or competency rather than a person’s motives or every use of power. Research on emotional manipulation is mixed across EI models, and a workplace study measured willingness to manipulate rather than a record of misconduct. Read a score as one prompt for development. When someone reports intimidation, deception, retaliation, or humiliation, examine the conduct and the available process directly.
The score answers a narrower question than the complaint
A manager may read a tense room accurately and still use that knowledge to corner someone in a meeting. Emotional intelligence, often shortened to EI or EQ, is not one universal test. Measures may assess performance on emotion-related problems, typical self-perceived functioning, or a wider set of workplace competencies. O’Connor and colleagues’ critical review describes these as conceptually distinct families and notes the large number of instruments built around them. A score can therefore describe what a measure was designed to collect without answering what happened with authority, information, disagreement, or another person’s ability to refuse.
Before interpreting a high result, identify the kind of evidence
In the ability model associated with Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso, EI concerns reasoning with emotional information: perceiving emotion, using it to support thought, understanding emotional change, and managing emotion. An ability instrument presents defined problems. Its result says how someone performed on those tasks.
Trait EI questionnaires describe typical emotional functioning or self-beliefs. Mixed competency measures add broader social and workplace capacities. A 360 process asks other people about behavior they have seen. The formats overlap in everyday language, but their evidence is not interchangeable.
A self-report about confidence in conflict is not a record of the last conflict, and a task result is not a measure of how a person uses authority when their interests are threatened. The result may suggest a development question; it cannot settle a conduct question by itself.
The manipulation finding is real, and narrower than the headline
Hyde, Grieve, Norris, and Kemp studied 765 employees’ willingness to use malicious or disingenuous emotional manipulation at work. In the female part of their sample, higher EI scores were associated with disingenuous manipulation and EI contributed to that outcome in a regression analysis. The authors described this as evidence that emotional skills can facilitate an undesirable behavior.
The measure was willingness, not an investigation of abuse, coercion, retaliation, or a particular manager’s conduct. The gender-specific pattern also cannot be turned into a claim about what women or men are like. The useful mechanism is simpler: reading another person’s fear or need for approval can improve an interaction, while the person using that information still chooses whether to disclose, pressure, or deceive.
Different measures point in different directions
Nguyen, Tuan, and Takahashi pooled 5,687 participants and found different directions depending on the EI measure and the manipulation outcome. Self-reported ability-based EI had a small positive association with non-prosocial manipulation, while trait EI had a negative association with one non-prosocial measure. Trait EI also related positively to prosocial ways of managing other people’s emotions.
The result is a measurement warning, not a paradox about people. ‘High EQ’ hides the scale, response format, and behavior being studied. The authors also note that most samples were university students, which limits a direct leap to employees.
A manager should ask for the instrument and outcome before drawing a conclusion. The evidence identifies a question worth examining; it does not tell a manager how often harmful conduct occurs or predict one person’s next decision.
Watch what happens to the other person’s freedom
Consider a project handoff in which a senior employee notices a junior colleague’s anxiety about a deadline. The senior employee lowers their voice, asks careful questions, and gets agreement to accept extra work. The interaction looks calm. Was the deadline disclosed? Could the junior colleague decline without retaliation? Did authority make refusal costly? Those facts tell the team more about the exchange than a favorable score does.
A person who understands fear may use that understanding to make a request clearer, or to remove the other person’s room to choose. In a review, record the request, the information available, the decision rights, and what happened after hesitation. This makes the ethical issue visible without guessing at a hidden motive.
When harm is reported, stop using the score as a shortcut
When someone reports humiliation, coercion, exclusion, deception, or retaliation, the task is to establish what happened and protect a fair process. If feedback was withheld until a public meeting, record the setting, decision rights, witnesses, and the change expected next. A score should not become a character certificate that makes one account harder to hear. Assessment may return later as a development aid, but it cannot replace the organization’s ordinary process for a workplace concern.
Use a result to choose a practice, then look for the practice
A responsible interpretation links the measure to a small behavior another person can see. O’Connor and colleagues distinguish maximum performance on an emotion task from typical behavior, so a self-report about confidence in conflict should not be treated as proof of competent conflict work. It can instead prompt a short observation period: state the disagreement plainly, ask the other person to restate their view, and record whether dissent and the final decision are both documented.
The test is what follows. If colleagues describe interruptions while the participant sees directness, discuss the gap in terms of setting and impact.
If the person begins making room for dissent and documents the decision, the practice has become observable. Neither result requires a public ranking.
More observers can reveal a pattern without proving a case
Observer feedback can bring the workplace into view. Colleagues may describe whether a manager invites dissent, keeps confidences, or reacts differently to bad news. That information can expose a pattern a private questionnaire will miss.
It still needs context. A recent promotion, fear of consequences, local expectations about emotional expression, or a necessary boundary can shape what someone reports. Ask who was invited, what behavior was described, and how confidentiality works before treating agreement among raters as a settled verdict.
For development, use repeated actions that can be discussed and changed. For a complaint, keep the assessment in its lane and follow the organization’s conduct process.
Development and accountability need different evidence
For an individual, begin with a situation another person could describe. When does reading emotion become pressure? Have you explained the reason for a request? Can the other person say no? What do you do after hearing that your approach caused harm? One answer tied to a meeting or decision is more useful than a general promise to be empathetic. For a manager, keep development separate from accountability. A private reflection can support practice in feedback, pressure, disagreement, and repair. Threats, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and repeated humiliation belong in the established workplace process. That separation also protects the assessment: it can invite a better next action without being asked to excuse the last one.
A team rollout should end in behavior, not a verdict
Emotional regulation can help someone listen through anger. The same control of expression can conceal a threat while steering a colleague toward an unwanted decision. The practical test is whether the interaction leaves the other person informed, able to set a boundary, and free to disagree without punishment.
A team rollout should state that purpose before anyone begins: participation is for development, individual answers stay private by default, and the result is not a hiring, promotion, ranking, or performance score. The current EQ Test assessment is a live, original 16-prompt browser-based self-reflection. It is a non-validated developmental aid, not an ability test, total EQ quotient, or employee comparison. Teams can explore a private reflection followed by structured discussion through [EQ Test for teams](/teams).
A high result can sit beside harmful behavior because skill and use are separate parts of the workplace problem. Let the measure suggest what to practice. Let observable conduct determine what needs accountability.
Questions readers ask
Can someone fake a high EQ score?
A self-report score can be influenced by self-presentation, misunderstanding, or a person's genuine but inaccurate view of their usual behavior. An ability test uses performance tasks, yet its result still covers only the defined tasks. Neither format proves how someone behaves in every workplace situation.
Does a high EQ score mean someone is manipulative?
No. Research has found mixed relationships depending on the EI model and the manipulation measure. A high score is not evidence of manipulation. If manipulation is a concern, examine specific conduct, motives expressed in the situation, power, and whether people could make a free and informed choice.
Should employers use EQ scores to identify harmful employees?
No. EQ scores should not be used to diagnose, rank, hire, promote, or decide who belongs on a team. For development, a voluntary and private assessment can support a behavior goal. Workplace concerns require evidence about conduct and the organization's normal accountability process.
What should I do if a manager has a high EQ score but treats people badly?
Describe the behavior, setting, impact, and any relevant witnesses or records through the appropriate workplace channel. Do not argue about the manager's score. A favorable assessment result does not remove the need to address intimidation, deception, retaliation, harassment, or other harmful conduct.
Sources
- The Measurement of Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Researchers and Practitioners
Supports the distinction among ability, trait, and mixed EI measures and the need to match a measure to its intended purpose.
- The Ability Model of Emotional Intelligence: Principles and Updates
Supports the ability model's focus on emotional information processing and its four problem-solving areas, while noting ongoing measurement questions.
- The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence: The Role of Gender and the Dark Triad in Emotional Manipulation at Work
Supports the workplace study's finding about emotional-intelligence measures and willingness to use malicious or disingenuous emotional manipulation.
- A Meta-Analytic Investigation of the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Manipulation
Supports the mixed direction of associations, the cross-sectional limitation, and the authors' warning that mostly university-student samples limit workplace generalization.
Apply it to the real situation
See how you respond when work gets emotionally difficult.
From this guide: Choose one behavior from this guide to observe in the next relevant conversation.
Build a private profile across ten emotional-work continuums, then choose one observable behavior to practise.