Ideally, ability-based emotional intelligence (AEI) should be measured in everyday emotional response. The study argues that narrative construction is a potential candidate for this purpose. The study sets up the hypothesis that constructing a problem-centered narrative reflects the level of the emotion regulation component of AEI. Ninety participants were asked to narrate four emotional episodes. The emotion regulation component of AEI, fluid intelligence and personality were assessed with self-report measures. The use of narrative transformation in narrative construction was measured with automated linguistic analysis. The results show that the level of narrative transformation reflects the emotion regulation component of AEI, and it also has a distinct relationship with fluid intelligence. The findings are discussed in terms of the usefulness of automated linguistic analysis of narrative construction in measuring AEI.