Nonverbal receiving ability as emotional and cognitive empathy: Conceptualization and measurement

Abstract

Nonverbal receiving abilities are a critical component of social intelligence. We relate nonverbal receiving ability to research on emotional and cognitive empathy and review attempts to develop psychometrically construct-valid and reliable tests of nonverbal receiving ability. We describe the Communication of Affect Receiving Ability Test (CARAT) that uniquely employs ecologically valid, dynamic video clips of spontaneous emotional expressions and new versions of CARAT intended to extend the nomological net associated with nonverbal receiving ability/empathy. We describe CARAT-SPR (Spontaneous, Posed, Regulated) designed to assess both emotional and cognitive empathy and the CARAT-DPA (Discrete Primary Affects) designed to measure abilities to detect specific expressions of discrete primary affects in the dynamic stream of spontaneous expression, showing evidence of construct validity of skills for judging spontaneous emotional expression.