Glossary // Glossary term Technical
Construct validity
The degree to which a measure captures the psychological construct it is meant to capture, rather than something correlated with it. For emotion, construct validity is difficult to establish because there is no single agreed criterion: self-report, behaviour and physiology each capture different aspects and often agree only modestly. A measure can be highly reliable, giving the same value repeatedly, and still have weak construct validity. Affective computing promises to infer emotion as if it were a system metric. The evidence on facial movements and autonomic signals, together with questions of consent, explains why every metric in this artifact is an artistic value. How one could reason about recording a catharsis-like change of state: signals, features, inference and context, baselines, self-report, error costs and ethics, and why every step stays uncertain. Nothing on this site measures anyone. The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at. (2009). Measures of emotion: A review. doi:10.1080/02699930802204677 Supports the claims that measures tend to reflect dimensions rather than discrete states, converge only modestly, and that there is no gold-standard measure of emotion. Narrative review. (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements. doi:10.1177/1529100619832930 Supports the claim that facial configurations are not reliable, specific indicators of emotional states across cultures, situations and people, although they co-occur above chance. A narrative review by authors associated with one theoretical position; critics dispute parts of it.Where the site uses it
Studies behind it