1. Abstract
The Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS) is a widely recognized, psychometrically sound, self-report measurement instrument developed by Chi-Sum Wong and Kenneth S. Law (2002) to evaluate emotional intelligence within organizational, occupational, and psychological settings. Grounded in the conceptual ability-based framework established by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer (1990), the WLEIS operationalizes emotional intelligence as a multidimensional construct comprising four distinct yet interrelated dimensions: Self-Emotion Appraisal (SEA), Others’ Emotion Appraisal (OEA), Use of Emotion (UOE), and Regulation of Emotion (ROE). The instrument consists of 16 items, with four items allocated to each subscale, evaluated across a 5-point Likert response scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree).
Extensive psychometric investigations have established the scale’s robust structural validity, factorial invariance across diverse cultural contexts, and convergent and discriminant validity against major personality frameworks such as the Big Five personality traits and general mental ability. Internal consistency estimates across numerous empirical studies consistently report Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between .76 and .89 across the four subscales, with overall composite reliabilities frequently exceeding .85. The instrument demonstrates strong predictive utility regarding organizational citizenship behaviors, occupational performance, job satisfaction, leadership effectiveness, affective commitment, and burnout mitigation. Because of its brief administration time, clear factor structure, and rigorous theoretical foundation, the WLEIS remains a benchmark psychometric tool across managerial psychology, human resource development, educational psychology, and clinical research.
2. Keywords
Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, WLEIS, Emotional Intelligence, Self-Emotion Appraisal, Others Emotion Appraisal, Regulation of Emotion, Use of Emotion, Trait EI, Psychometrics, Leadership Effectiveness
3. Authors
The WLEIS was conceptualized and developed by distinguished scholars in organizational behavior and human resource management:
- Chi-Sum Wong, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Management, Department of Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong. Institutional correspondence address:
[email protected]. Dr. Wong’s research expertise spans emotional intelligence in the workplace, employee turnover, cross-cultural management, and structural equation modeling applications in organizational science. - Kenneth S. Law, Ph.D. — Professor of Management, Department of Management, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Institutional correspondence address:
[email protected]. Dr. Law is an internationally renowned scholar recognized for his methodological work on multidimensional constructs, job performance modeling, and leadership dynamics.
4. Purpose
The primary purpose of the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale is to provide researchers and organizational practitioners with a short, methodologically rigorous, and theoretically coherent instrument designed to measure individuals’ self-perceptions of their emotional abilities. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the literature on emotional intelligence was polarized between lengthy ability tests (such as performance-based tests requiring objective scoring keys) and commercialized self-report inventories that conflated emotional intelligence with personality traits, social skills, and generalized well-being. Wong and Law recognized the critical need for an instrument that strictly operationalized Mayer and Salovey’s (1990) four-branch conceptualization without confounding emotional intelligence with established personality constructs such as neuroticism, extraversion, or conscientiousness.
In occupational and organizational contexts, the WLEIS is routinely administered to evaluate managerial competencies, team dynamics, interpersonal effectiveness, and employee resilience under conditions of occupational stress. Organizational researchers utilize the instrument to examine how emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between work stressors, emotional labor, and employee turnover intentions. For example, individuals who score highly on emotion regulation can navigate demanding customer-facing interactions without experiencing severe psychological strain or depersonalization.
In academic, clinical, and counseling psychology, the WLEIS serves as a diagnostic screening and evaluative tool for socio-emotional adjustment, interpersonal relationship dysfunction, and self-regulatory deficits. Researchers investigating clinical correlates have used the WLEIS to examine psychological morbidity, depression vulnerability, subjective happiness, and adaptive coping mechanisms in adolescents and adult populations. Its succinct 16-item format makes it ideal for large-scale survey research, longitudinal diary studies, and multi-wave organizational interventions where respondent fatigue presents a substantial threat to psychometric data quality.
5. Psychological Construct
The WLEIS assesses emotional intelligence as a multidimensional construct comprising four discrete theoretical domains, each represented by four items:
1. Self-Emotion Appraisal (SEA)
Self-Emotion Appraisal refers to an individual’s ability to accurately perceive, identify, and understand their own deep emotional states. Rather than experiencing ambiguous physiological or affective sensations, individuals with high SEA possess profound affective self-awareness. They understand why they experience specific emotions, recognize transitions in their internal affective states, and can verbalize these emotional experiences with precision. For instance, an individual high in SEA can immediately differentiate between feelings of frustration stemming from fatigue versus anxiety triggered by impending evaluative scrutiny (e.g., item: “I have a good sense of why I have certain feelings most of the time”).
2. Others’ Emotion Appraisal (OEA)
Others’ Emotion Appraisal captures interpersonal emotional sensitivity and perceptual acuity. This dimension reflects an individual’s inclination and capacity to observe, interpret, and decode the nonverbal cues, vocal inflections, facial expressions, and behavioral markers of others to accurately infer their emotional experiences. High OEA enables an individual to exhibit high empathy and social awareness, identifying subtle undercurrents of discontent, joy, or distress in colleagues, subordinates, or family members before such feelings are explicitly verbalized (e.g., item: “I am sensitive to the feelings and emotions of others”).
3. Use of Emotion (UOE)
Use of Emotion pertains to the capacity to direct, channel, and harness emotional energy to facilitate constructive activities, maintain motivation, enhance cognitive performance, and achieve personal and professional goals. This dimension bridges affective states with conative and intentional behaviors. Individuals scoring high in UOE use positive self-reinforcement, intrinsic motivation, and targeted emotional cultivation to sustain perseverance, focus on long-term objectives, and surmount obstacles (e.g., item: “I always set goals for myself and then try my best to achieve them”).
4. Regulation of Emotion (ROE)
Regulation of Emotion involves the conscious and deliberate modulation of emotional states, specifically the ability to attenuate acute negative emotions such as anger, despair, or panic, and to regain psychological equilibrium following upsetting events. High ROE does not imply emotional suppression or avoidance; rather, it denotes the adaptive deployment of cognitive reappraisal and affective recovery strategies to prevent disruptive impulses from impairing rational judgment and behavioral self-control (e.g., item: “I can always calm down quickly when I am very angry”).
6. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical architecture of the WLEIS is directly derived from the landmark conceptual model formulated by Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer in 1990, later synthesized by Mayer, Caruso, and Salovey (1999). Mayer and Salovey defined emotional intelligence as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.
Wong and Law (2002) integrated Mayer and Salovey’s four-branch conceptualization into the domain of organizational psychology, contrasting their ability-based model with alternative “mixed models” (such as those of Daniel Goleman and Reuven Bar-On). Mixed models had incorporated diverse non-cognitive variables such as general optimism, self-actualization, independence, and social responsibility, causing severe conceptual contamination. Wong and Law posited that emotional intelligence must remain theoretically pure, focusing strictly on core emotional faculties rather than conflating mental abilities with broad personality traits.
Furthermore, Wong and Law anchored the construct within Law, Wong, and Mobley’s (1998) structural framework of multidimensional constructs. In this framework, constructs can be defined as latent, aggregate, or profile constructs. The authors modeled emotional intelligence as a multidimensional construct where the four distinct facets (SEA, OEA, UOE, ROE) occupy the same conceptual plane and contribute to an overarching second-order construct of generalized emotional intelligence. This conceptual positioning maintains that while an individual may possess varying profiles of strength across the four domains, the synergistic combination of these domains predicts superior behavioral adaptation and interpersonal functioning in high-stress social environments.
7. Validity
The psychometric validity of the WLEIS has been corroborated through rigorous empirical investigations across diverse organizational, cultural, and demographic samples:
Construct and Structural Validity
Wong and Law (2002) established structural validity across several independent developmental samples consisting of undergraduate business students, civil servants, supervisors, and front-line subordinates in Hong Kong. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated that a four-factor correlated model fit the empirical data substantially better than competing unifactorial or two-factor models (e.g., combining self-appraisal with regulation). Across subsequent validation studies internationally (e.g., European, Latin American, and North American cohorts), the four-factor structure has demonstrated cross-cultural invariance and metric equivalence.
Convergent and Discriminant Validity
Extensive validity evaluations have confirmed that the WLEIS converges as hypothesized with alternative emotional intelligence measures while maintaining clear discriminant validity from the Big Five personality traits (Costa & McCrae’s NEO-PI-R / NEO-FFI). In their foundational 2002 study, Wong and Law found moderate correlations between WLEIS dimensions and extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness (typically $r = .20$ to $.35$), alongside negative associations with neuroticism ($r = -.25$ to $-.40$). Importantly, multiple regression analyses revealed that the WLEIS accounts for significant incremental variance in job performance, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions over and above general mental ability (GMA) and Big Five personality dimensions.
Criterion and Predictive Validity
The scale demonstrates robust predictive validity for an array of workplace and psychological outcomes:
- Job Performance: Supervisory ratings of employee job performance consistently correlate positively with employee WLEIS composite scores ($r = .21$ to $.34$).
- Job Satisfaction: Multiple investigations demonstrate that employees possessing higher emotional intelligence exhibit greater organizational commitment and job satisfaction, particularly in professions with high emotional labor demands (Wong, Wong, & Law, 2004).
- Leadership Effectiveness: Leader WLEIS scores significantly predict subordinate satisfaction, subordinate affective commitment, and group-level performance outcomes (Wong & Law, 2002; Condon, 2011).
- Burnout and Well-Being: Longitudinal studies have identified high WLEIS scores as a significant protective buffer against emotional exhaustion, psychological distress, and depersonalization.
8. Reliability
The WLEIS displays high reliability across various psychometric parameters. In their initial 2002 publication, Wong and Law reported that the internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) for the four subscales were uniformly high across multiple independent samples:
- Self-Emotion Appraisal (SEA): $\alpha$ ranged from .86 to .89
- Others’ Emotion Appraisal (OEA): $\alpha$ ranged from .82 to .88
- Use of Emotion (UOE): $\alpha$ ranged from .76 to .84
- Regulation of Emotion (ROE): $\alpha$ ranged from .79 to .86
- Overall Scale Composite: Overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficients routinely range between .89 and .92.
Subsequent psychometric evaluations across global populations have replicated these high internal consistency metrics. For example, investigations involving Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Scandinavian adaptations report subscale alpha values consistently exceeding the standard .70 psychometric threshold, typically falling between .78 and .91. Test-retest reliability evaluated across a 4-to-6-week interval has shown stability coefficients exceeding $r = .80$, indicating that the scale captures stable individual differences rather than transient, state-dependent affective fluctuations.
9. Factor Analysis
Wong and Law (2002) conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) during the initial scale development phase, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on independent samples to verify the dimensional integrity of the 16 items. The factor-analytic evidence provided definitive empirical support for the hypothesized four-factor model:
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
Using principal axis factoring with oblique (promax/oblimin) rotation, EFA revealed four distinct factors with eigenvalues exceeding 1.0, collectively accounting for more than 60% of the total variance. All 16 items loaded strongly onto their designated theoretical dimensions (factor loadings ranging from .62 to .87), with negligible cross-loadings (all secondary loadings $< .25$).
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
In CFA testing, the four-factor correlated model displayed excellent fit to the data across various fit indices:
- Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI): Values consistently $ge .92$
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently $ge .94$ to $.97$
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values typically $le .05$ to $.06$ (90% CI [.042, .068])
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values $le .05$
CFA model comparisons unequivocally confirmed that the four-factor model provided a superior fit over a unifactorial general-factor model ($\Delta\chi^2$ significant at $p < .001$) and various nested two- and three-factor formulations. A second-order hierarchical model—wherein a higher-order latent construct of Emotional Intelligence accounts for the variance among SEA, OEA, UOE, and ROE—also yielded acceptable fit indices ($CFI > .93$,$RMSEA approx .06$), confirming that researchers may analyze the four subscales separately or aggregate them into an overall composite score depending on their research questions.
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
- Instrument Name: Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale (WLEIS)
- Authors: Chi-Sum Wong and Kenneth S. Law (2002)
- Construct Measured: Emotional Intelligence (trait/perceived ability)
- Structure: 16 items categorized into four distinct subscales (4 items per dimension):
- Self-Emotion Appraisal (SEA): Items 1–4
- Others’ Emotion Appraisal (OEA): Items 5–8
- Use of Emotion (UOE): Items 9–12
- Regulation of Emotion (ROE): Items 13–16
- Response Scale: 5-point Likert scale (1 = totally disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral / neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = totally agree)
- Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
- Reverse-Coded Items: None. All 16 items are phrased positively in the direction of emotional competence.
- Scoring Procedures:
- Subscale Scores: Computed by calculating the arithmetic mean (or sum) of the four items corresponding to each dimension. Subscale mean scores range from 1.00 to 5.00.
- Overall Score: Computed by calculating the arithmetic mean (or sum) across all 16 items, yielding an overall composite score ranging from 1.00 to 5.00 (or total raw sum from 16 to 80).
- Interpretation: Higher numerical scores indicate higher perceived emotional intelligence. Mean scores above 4.0 typically reflect high emotional competence, scores around 3.0 denote average capability, and scores below 2.5 indicate potential deficits in socio-emotional functioning.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale was developed and published in 2002. The instrument was published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal (The Leadership Quarterly) and is considered an open psychometric instrument for non-commercial, academic, and research purposes. In their publications, the authors have made the complete scale public to stimulate scientific research into emotional intelligence within organizational and psychological domains.
Researchers wishing to use the WLEIS in empirical studies or academic theses generally do not need to pay licensing fees, provided that proper scholarly citation is given to the original authors (Wong & Law, 2002). For commercial usage, executive coaching packages, or inclusion in proprietary organizational consulting batteries, practitioners are advised to contact the authors (Chi-Sum Wong: [email protected] or Kenneth S. Law: [email protected]) to secure formal permissions.
12. References
- Condon, R. J. (2011). The relationship between self-awareness and leadership: Extending measurement and conceptualisation (Master’s thesis). University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/5185
- Law, K. S., Wong, C. S., & Mobley, W. H. (1998). Toward a taxonomy of multidimensional constructs. Academy of Management Review, 23(4), 741–755. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1998.1255636
- Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. J. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications (pp. 3–34). Basic Books.
- Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (1999). Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence. Intelligence, 27(4), 267–298. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0160-2896(99)00016-1
- Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9(3), 185–211. https://doi.org/10.2190/DUGG-P24E-52WK-6CDG
- Wong, C. S., & Law, K. S. (2002). The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: An exploratory study. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(3), 243–274. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00099-1
- Wong, C. S., Law, K. S., & Wong, P. M. (2004). Development and validation of a forced choice emotional intelligence for Chinese respondents in Hong Kong. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 21(4), 535–559. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:APJM.0000048716.48662.cb
- Wong, C. S., Wong, P. M., & Law, K. S. (2004). The interaction effect of emotional intelligence and emotional labor on job satisfaction: A test of Holland’s classification of occupations. In C. E. J. Härtel, W. J. Zerbe, & N. M. Ashkanasy (Eds.), Emotions in organizational behavior (pp. 235–250). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.