App developed to measure emotional intelligence

More than 6,000 people from around one hundred countries have already downloaded the MEIT test (Mobile Emotional Intelligence Test) that offers important advantages in the face of emotional intelligence test on paper up to date. Advantages such as easiness to adapt it to the specific needs of a company or an organization, and the possibilities that offers the fact that it is used on a technological support, which enables to measure time of the answer of each question or to see how one person pass from a neutral mood to a specific mood, for example.

The main innovation of MEIT is that the test is not just a questionnaire: it consists of a skill test to evaluate three aspects: the ability to perceive emotions, the understanding of these emotions and the ability to manage them. Edgar Bresó, lecturer in Social Psychology at the UJI and one of the creators of the Emotional Test, explains that the first part of the test is already running. It enables to obtain much information to "elaborate a world map that collects average scoring in each country. Rumania, Denmark, South Africa and Vietnam are the countries with the best scores in this moment, but numbers are changing."

Bresó highlights the advantages of using this on-line test: "It is fundamental to control the time in each question, for example. In a test on paper you can only know the time of the global answer of all the questionnaire, but not of each test, and there is a huge difference when a person, who is to be in front of a public, discerns a bad mood quickly and when this person takes a lot of time to see it." Emotional intelligence tests are regularly used by companies and organisms in order to hire staff, to launch a product and so on. The lecturer in Social Psychology at the UJI highlights the possibility of adaptation to the needs of each client that MEIT offers, depending on the information that the client wants to compile and evaluate.

PicFeel, photography to share emotions

PicFeel is the second project in which the company is working. It is a social network that will enable to share emotions and to geolocatizate them through pictures. "The idea is that users can upload a picture and tag it with emotions that these pictures produce in them, such as surprise, sadness, envy and so on. It would be like Instagram, but with emotions," explains Bresó. The uploaded and tagged pictures will generate a world map of emotions that users will notify. "This project can also have applications for future studies as, for example, in the marketing field to see with which pictures and colours people connect certain emotions," he notes.

The last project of the company Emotional Apps of which Francisco Ramos, lecturer in Computer Systems and Languages is part will consist of developing an application in order to educate children in emotional intelligence through game. "The objective is that children learn to tag and manage their emotions through interactive games." Technology and emotional intelligence are present again in products developed by the company, in this case, by making children to learn playing with emotions.