On the Construct Validity of Performance-Based Emotion Recognition Tests: Correlations with Social-Emotional Functioning and Cognitive Skills

This study examined the construct validity of performance-based emotion recognition tests. We recruited 227 adults (30–60 years old) through Prolific to complete four emotion recognition tasks in addition to measures of self-reported empathy, crystallised intelligence, social confidence, loneliness/well-being, interest in people versus things, and reading enjoyment (all measured with at least two indicators). Consistent with previous research, performance-based emotion recognition tasks were positively correlated and formed a separate cluster. This cluster correlated with crystallised intelligence but not with self-reported emotion recognition skills, social-emotional functioning, interest in people vs. things, or reading pleasure. Overall, our findings suggest that performance-based emotion recognition tests primarily assess skills related to those measured by performance-based tests of cognitive intelligence, rather than skills related to the social-emotional functioning as experienced by the participants. This may partially explain the low correlation between subjective and performance-based measures of emotion recognition.