What are Plutchik's eight core emotions?

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions arranges emotions around eight core emotions: fear, joy, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, trust, and anticipation. The EQ Dashboard organizes its 40 questions around these eight, with five questions for each one, and shows how strongly each comes through in your answers.

How is the EQ Dashboard different from the short EQ test?

The short EQ test (10 questions) profiles four broad skills: Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Empathy, and Social Skills. The EQ Dashboard (40 questions) maps how strongly each of eight core emotions from Plutchik's wheel shows up in your answers. They measure different things, so neither replaces the other.

Can EQ be measured scientifically?

Researchers study emotional intelligence with both ability tests and self-report scales. The EQ Dashboard is an original self-report quiz organized around Plutchik's eight core emotions, so it reflects how you see your own emotional tendencies. It is not an administration of the ability-based Salovey-Mayer model or the Wong & Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS), and the research cited on the test page describes the field in general, not this quiz's own psychometrics.

Who benefits most from taking the EQ Dashboard?

Anyone who wants a structured way to reflect on their emotional patterns, for example before a coaching or development conversation, or to notice which emotions tend to lead. It is a self-reflection tool, not a clinical instrument.

Is this the same as the MSCEIT?

No. The MSCEIT is a performance-based instrument that scores your actual answers to emotion problems and is licensed for professional use. The EQ Dashboard is a self-report reflection organized around Plutchik's eight core emotions: it asks how you tend to react in scenarios, and it does not use the MSCEIT's four-branch framework. It is a structured self-assessment, not the validated MSCEIT, and shouldn't be read as a clinical score.

Is a high or low score in an emotion good or bad?

Neither, on its own. A higher percentage means that emotion shows up more strongly in your answers, not that you handle it better or worse. What matters is the pattern: which emotions lead your profile, which stay quiet, and whether that fits the situations you face. Retaking the Dashboard later shows how your pattern shifts.

Should I take the short EQ test or the full Dashboard?

Take the short EQ Test for a quick profile of four skills (Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Empathy, and Social Skills) in about two minutes. Take the 40-question Dashboard when you want to see how strongly each of eight core emotions shows up for you. They measure different things, so you can take both.

PersonalityFramework-based· EQ self-report

Map Your Full EQ Profile, Free 40-Question Emotional Intelligence Dashboard

Take the free EQ Dashboard assessment online. Map the eight core emotions in Plutchik's wheel, from fear and joy to trust and anticipation. 40 questions, detailed results.

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The basics

What is the EQ Dashboard?

The EQ Dashboard is a 40-question self-report assessment of your emotional landscape, built around the eight core emotions in Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. The eight are fear, joy, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, trust, and anticipation. It is an original JobCannon quiz, not an administration of an ability-based test such as the MSCEIT or of a published scale such as the Wong & Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS).

Keep reading

Each question puts you in a scenario and asks how you would react, and every question feeds one of the eight emotions, five questions per emotion. A higher percentage for an emotion means it shows up more strongly in your answers, not that you handle it better or worse. The result is a profile of your emotional tendencies, not a single score.

JobCannon's 40-question EQ Dashboard gives you an emotion-by-emotion profile: a percentage and a tier for each of the eight emotions, a wheel that shows the shape of your profile, and the emotion that leads it. It is a structured self-assessment for reflection, not a clinical or diagnostic tool.

Closely related

What you get

What You'll Discover

Your score for each of the eight core emotions: fear, joy, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, trust, and anticipation

Which emotion leads your profile, with a short description of what that looks like

An average intensity figure across all eight emotions, shown at the center of the wheel

Your whole emotional profile drawn as a wheel, so you can see its shape at a glance

How you tend to respond to joy, fear, anger, and the other emotions in everyday scenarios

Which emotions run strong and which stay quiet, with a tier for each

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📚Scientific validation

EQ Dashboard (Emotional Intelligence) is grounded in published psychometric research:

EQ Dashboard (Emotional Intelligence)

JobCannon's EQ Dashboard is an original 40-item, workplace-scenario self-report quiz organized around Plutchik's eight core emotions (fear, joy, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, trust, anticipation) — not an administration of the Salovey-Mayer ability-based EI model or the Wong & Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS). The citations below describe the general Emotional Intelligence research field, not this test's own psychometrics.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Introduced the ability-based emotional intelligence framework (perceiving, using, understanding, managing emotions). Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9, 185-211 source

O'Boyle, E. H., Humphrey, R. H., Pollack, J. M., Hawver, T. H., & Story, P. A. (2011). Meta-analysis found EI correlates with job performance at ρ=.24-.30, with incremental validity beyond cognitive ability and the Big Five. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32, 788-818 source

Mattingly, V., & Kraiger, K. (2019). Meta-analysis of 58 studies found EI is trainable, with a moderate positive training effect. Human Resource Management Review, 29, 140-155 source

MacCann, C., Jiang, Y., Brown, L. E. R., Double, K. S., Bucich, M., & Minbashian, A. (2020). Meta-analysis (158 citations, N=42,529) found EI is the third most important predictor of academic performance, after intelligence and conscientiousness. Psychological Bulletin, 146, 150-186 source