Introducing the Naturalistic Expression Recognition Task (NERT): Associations with posed expression recognition, empathy, and general cognitive ability

Given that emotional expressions are essential for navigating our social world, it is imperative that measures of facial expression recognition ability are psychometrically rigorous and easy to administer. Unfortunately, most studies to date have used face images of prototypically posed expressions, which lack the nuance and variation of real-life expressions and are often perceived as fake. To address the need for a more ecologically valid measure of expression recognition, we introduce the Naturalistic Expression Recognition Task (NERT), modeled after an established posed expression labeling task. We investigated whether the NERT shows expected associations with empathy and general cognitive ability, and whether these associations align with those found for the corresponding posed expression task, despite differences in the realism and perceived genuineness of the expressions. Across three studies, we found that the NERT had strong psychometric properties that make it well suited for examining individual differences in expression recognition ability. While both the NERT and the posed expression task showed similarly sized positive associations with measures of cognitive and affective empathy, the NERT exhibited a stronger positive association with cognitive ability than did the posed expression task. Our findings suggest that naturalistic expressions—which are more nuanced and varied than posed expressions—can offer equally, if not more, robust insights into expression recognition ability. The NERT serves as a valuable tool for researchers seeking to enhance the ecological validity of their studies by incorporating naturalistic stimuli.