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

As decoding emotional expressions is essential to navigating the social world, it is imperative that measures of facial expression labeling ability are psychometrically rigorous and easy to administer. Unfortunately, most studies have used 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 labeling, we introduce the Naturalistic Expression Labeling Task (NELT), modeled after an established posed expression labeling task. We investigated whether the NELT shows expected associations with empathy and general cognitive ability, and the extent to which 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 NELT had strong psychometric properties—including high reliability—that make it well suited to examining individual differences in expression labeling ability. While both the NELT and the posed expression task showed similarly sized positive associations with measures of cognitive and affective empathy, the NELT exhibited a stronger positive association with cognitive ability than did the posed expression task. Our findings suggest that naturalistic expressions can provide insights into expression labeling ability that are at least as robust as those derived from posed expressions. The NELT can serve as a valuable tool for researchers seeking to enhance the ecological validity of their studies by incorporating naturalistic stimuli.