Emotional Intelligence as a Personality State

Abstract. Contemporary research has begun to explore the notion that emotional intelligence (EI) has an important state component in addition to the trait component, as represented in the whole trait theory. This implies that state EI (or enacted EI) has similar cognitive, affective, and motivational contents as its corresponding trait. The question, however, of whether a trait EI construct means the same across the individual (trait) and state levels of analysis has not been empirically investigated. To address this gap, the present study examines the assessment of enacted EI, using the full version of the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) on both between-person and within-person levels of analysis. Participants were 493 Greek employees who completed the WLEIS for 5 consecutive workdays. Multilevel confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that the original four-factor multilevel model appeared to best fit the data. Multilevel measurement invariance analysis supported the equivalence of the measure across different levels of analysis. In conclusion, the WLEIS is a configural cluster construct, believed to be a valuable and reliable tool for assessing enacted EI within the workplace. Implications for future research on enacted EI are discussed.