There has been a large influx of academic research on the concept of ‘emotional intelligence’ (EI), due to the belief that it may be able to improve personal and societal well-being. EI represents the ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions to enhance thought. Everyone has EI, with the stereotype being that women tend to possess a higher EI than men. For most of us, it is untapped and can be developed through experience and awareness. The current study investigates the effects of EI on our decision strategy, i.e., ‘maximising’ (selecting the ‘best’ option or one with the highest utility) or ‘satisficing’ (choosing a ‘good enough’ alternative), as well as our confidence in decision-making. Participants (N = 120) completed an on-line survey, made up of 6 tests: (1) demographics, (2) face perception, (3) situational test of emotional understanding (STEU), (4) situational test of emotional management (STEM), (5) maximising and regret, and (6) confidence in decision-making. For gender and EI, results found that women were significantly (p < .05) better than men in understanding emotions. Findings also showed that there was no significant difference between experience and EI, except for the face perception test – students outperformed (p < .05) working/retired participants. Experience also had no effect on confidence in decision-making. Furthermore, a significant difference (p < .05) was only found between culture and understanding emotions. The present study also discovered that not all EI sub-tests were correlated with one another – only the STEU test was correlated (p < .05) to both, face perception and STEM tests. Meanwhile, maximisation was positively correlated (p < .05) to face perception test, while STEU and STEM tests were positively correlated (p < .05) to regret test. As predicted, maximisers will regret more than satisficers. Also, those who regret tend to have lower confidence in decisions they make. Based on these results, implications for expanding and improving the current research are suggested.