Dr Wendy Higgins
Award for Excellent PhD Thesis in Psychology

Wendy completed her PhD at Macquarie University in 2025. Her research, which focused on measurement practices in the psychological sciences, highlighted major limitations with the most widely used measure of adult social cognitive ability, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test.

In particular, she demonstrated that the Eyes Test is not supported by empirical evidence, meaning that Eyes Test scores are largely uninterpretable. This is especially striking given the test’s extensive use in clinical research. Wendy recommended that researchers and clinicians stop using the Eyes Test and re-evaluate research findings based on it.

Recognising that measurement validity is often overlooked in psychology, Wendy also proposed a novel concept of validity that distinguishes between the validity potential of psychological tests (e.g., the Eyes Test) and the realised validity of the scores they produce in specific samples. This distinction can facilitate improved measurement validation practices by emphasising the need to assess both the conceptual soundness of psychological tests and the strength of the empirical evidence supporting the validity of test scores in each new context.

Wendy continues working to improve research practices and strengthen validation standards in her role as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne.