Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT/MEIS) and overall, verbal, and nonverbal intelligence: Meta-analytic evidence and critical contingencies

•Overall MSCEI/MEIS is positively correlated with various forms of intelligence.•The study identified four critical contingencies for the above relationships.•The above relationships vary depending on the specific intelligence instrument.

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been widely used in psychological, managerial, and educational research. Among all the measures, MSCEIT (and its earlier version MEIS) has been widely used to assess EI ability. However, there is little systematic research regarding its relationship with overall, verbal, and nonverbal intelligence. The current research fills this gap in the literature by meta-analyzing the correlations between overall MSCEIT/MEIS and overall, verbal, and nonverbal intelligence. Additionally, the current research identified four critical contingencies: the type of an instrument for intelligence assessment, the study population, the average age of a sample, and the female percentage of a sample.