Nonlinguistic Emotion Recognition, Cognitive Intelligence, and Adaptive Performance

Emotion recognition ability in others (ERA-O) consists of the ability to accurately perceive an emotion expressed by another person but does not require any specific linguistic skills. The ability is distinct from the ability to label the perceived emotion accurately. Previous studies of ERA-O in adults, however, have contaminated the measurement of these abilities. Here, we validate a recently developed measure, the Face-Based Emotion Matching Test (FEMT), a nonlinguistic test of ERA-O in adults. In two independent studies with 492 employee participants overall, we replicate the statistically well-fitting, stable, unidimensional factor structure of the FEMT. We also demonstrate its convergent and discriminant validity with cognitive intelligence. Our findings are particularly relevant to the workplace because FEMT scores are associated with adaptive performance at work moderated by assertiveness and altruism, above and beyond existing contaminated measures of ERA-O. The findings from our studies contribu...