In a new study published in May 2025 from Communications Psychology, six leading Large Language Models (LLMs) took five gold-standard emotional-intelligence (EI) exams and walked away with an 81% mean - much higher than the human norm of 56%.

The study argues LLMs now excel at understanding feelings (cognitive empathy), even if they don’t feel them (affective empathy). For mental-health bots, leadership coaches, and conflict-resolution tools, that’s highly useful.

Researchers told GPT-4 to invent brand-new EI exams. It spun up fresh scenarios, options, and scoring keys that proved statistically interchangeable with the psychologist-crafted originals when humans tried them.

The email newsletter AI Fire summarized the implications: "Three years ago we joked that chatbots had the empathy of a toaster. Today they’re beating us at our own 'uniquely human' game and writing the rulebook. Ready for an assistant that understands you better than you do?"