The Nonverbal Emotion Assessment Tool (NEAT): An intercultural validation.

Abstract

This research aimed to validate a newly developed tool for the assessment of emotions. The "Nonverbal Emotion Assessment Tool" (NEAT) is based on schematic facial expressions of emotions and serves to capture both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of common emotions. Study 1 (N = 126) was conducted with primary school children (6-11 years), who matched the emotions represented in vignettes to the emotional facial expressions of the NEAT. Although the children's recognition rates varied across emotions, they were overall moderately accurate. Older children did not perform substantially better than younger children. Study 2 validated the NEAT scales with adult participants from Germany (N = 102), Bulgaria (N = 116), and Malaysia (N = 132). Cross-country intraclass correlations revealed cultural differences in emotion perception, yet the construct validity was high. Comparisons of the two European samples with the Southeast Asian sample yielded a lower level of agreement across countries than the comparison of the two European samples, suggesting more similarities between the German and Bulgarian samples and stronger differences between the European and the Malaysian sample. Together, these findings provide evidence that the NEAT is a useful and valid tool for the assessment of emotions in child and adult samples from different areas of the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).