Talking the Talk: The Effect of Vocalics in an Interview

Our voices carry more than just content. People continuously make assumptions of one’s intelligence, credibility, personality, and other characteristics merely based on the way we talk. As the diversity of individuals in the workplace increases, so too do the differences in how those individuals talk. It is important that we understand how these different ways of speaking are being perceived in the workplace. More specifically, how are individuals being perceived prior to being hired via the interview process? This Honors Capstone project aims to understand the impact that vocal characteristics in an individual have on the interviewer’s perception of the interviewee, and how that impacts the hiring process. This project will offer professionals of all ages tangible advice on ways to increase one’s chances of receiving a job just by altering aspects of one’s voice

Judgements of a speaker’s personality are correlated across differing content and stimulus type

It has previously been shown that first impressions of a speaker’s personality, whether accurate or not, can be judged from short utterances of vowels and greetings, as well as from prolonged sentences and readings of complex paragraphs. From these studies, it is established that listeners’ judgements are highly consistent with one another, suggesting that different people judge personality traits in a similar fashion, with three key personality traits being related to measures of valence (associated with trustworthiness), dominance, and attractiveness. Yet, particularly in voice perception, limited research has established the reliability of such personality judgements across stimulus types of varying lengths. Here we investigate whether first impressions of trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness of novel speakers are related when a judgement is made on hearing both one word and one sentence from the same speaker. Secondly, we test whether what is said, thus adjusting content, influences the stability of personality ratings. 60 Scottish voices (30 females) were recorded reading two texts: one of ambiguous content and one with socially-relevant content. One word (~500 ms) and one sentence (~3000 ms) were extracted from each recording for each speaker. 181 participants (138 females) rated either male or female voices across both content conditions (ambiguous, socially-relevant) and both stimulus types (word, sentence) for one of the three personality traits (trustworthiness, dominance, attractiveness). Pearson correlations showed personality ratings between words and sentences were strongly correlated, with no significant influence of content. In short, when establishing an impression of a novel speaker, judgments of three key personality traits are highly related whether you hear one word or one sentence, irrespective of what they are saying. This finding is consistent with initial personality judgments serving as elucidators of approach or avoidance behaviour, without modulation by time or content. All data and sounds are available on OSF (osf.io/s3cxy)

How do you say ‘hello’? Personality impressions from brief novel voices

On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices

Judging Trustworthiness, Competence and Dominance from Multimodal Emotional Expressions

This item is only available electronically.It is well-established that facial physical resemblances to emotional expressions can be misattributed as enduring traits (Montepare & Dobish, 2003). However, faces are typically encountered in the presence of other cues such as bodies and voices. With only a few studies having examined the integration of multiple emotional cues in trait judgements, the present study aimed to address this gap by investigating how people make judgements of trustworthiness, competence, and dominance from dynamic audio-visual stimuli. Participants (N = 158) viewed 104 videos of two posers (male and female) posing four emotions (happy, sad, angry or fearful) and rated them on all three traits. The videos showed an isolated voice, face, or body, or voice-face-body pairings that were emotionally congruent (e.g. all three cues expressing happiness) or incongruent (e.g. two cues expressing happiness with the third expressing anger). The results demonstrated that trait intensities were impaired by the presence of the incongruent emotion. When viewing the emotionally incongruent audio-visual stimuli, the perceptions of traits were more likely to be informed by the emotion displayed via two cues. The influence of the incongruent emotion cue was also reported, such that the posers were rated as more trustworthy and competent when displaying a happy face, and more dominant when displaying an angry body or voice. Hence, the strength of the face, voice, and body varied according to the emotion displayed, and the trait being perceived. These findings suggest the importance of using whole-person multisensory stimuli when investigating trait impressions formation.Thesis (B.PsychSc(Hons)) -- University of Adelaide, School of Psychology, 202

The multi-modal nature of trustworthiness perception

Most past work on trustworthiness perception has focused on the structural features of the human face. The present study investigates the interplay of dynamic information from two channels – the face and the voice. By systematically varying the level of trustworthiness in each channel, 49 participants were presented with either facial or vocal information, or the combination of both, and made explicit judgements with respect to trustworthiness, dominance, and emotional valence. For most measures results revealed a primacy effect of facial over vocal cues. In examining the exact nature of the trustworthiness - emotion link we further found that emotional valence functioned as a significant mediator in impressions of trustworthiness. The findings extend previous correlational evidence and provide important knowledge of how trustworthiness in its dynamic and multi-modal form is decoded by the human perceiver. Index Terms: trustworthiness, face, voice, emotion, dynamic, multi-moda

Vocal and facial trustworthiness of talking heads

Trust is a key aspect to human communication due to its link to co-operation and survival. Recent research by [Ballew and Todorov 2007] has shown that humans can generate an initial trustworthiness judgement based on facial features within 100ms. However, in that work, perceived trustworthiness has been studied solely in the context of facial information. It has been suggested by [Surawski and Ossoff 2006] that trustworthiness cues are also prevalent in the auditory channel. There is however, no prior empirical evidence to suggest that visual cues are more important than audio cues and how people deal with inconsistent cues between the audio and visual channels

Person Perception Aspects of Judgments of Truthfulness in Public Appeals

Although detection of deception accuracy rate has been researched extensively, the person perception components that are the basis for these judgments remain unclear. To explore this, 30 academics' person perceptions, as well as truthfulness judgment, of the individual presenting a televised appeal were measured using a 14-item scale. Twelve appeals (6 genuine and 6 false) for information regarding the whereabouts of a missing relative, or for information to apprehend the person who murdered their relative, were used. The person perception scale consisted of (1) global, abstract judgments (open, deceptive, genuine, trustworthy, and emotional) and (2) behavioural indices (facial pleasantness, facial animation, arousal, tension, involvement, verbal; consistency, plausibility and directness, and vocal certainty). Multiple regression identified person perceptions of openness, (non)deceptiveness, genuineness, trustworthiness, and verbal plausibility as significant predictors of truthfulness judgments. Future research should now explore the relationship of these person perception components of truth judgments to the accuracy

Evolutionary and Cognitive Approaches to Voice Perception in Humans: Acoustic Properties, Personality and Aesthetics

Voices are used as a vehicle for language, and variation in the acoustic properties of voices also contains information about the speaker. Listeners use measurable qualities, such as pitch and formant traits, as cues to a speaker’s physical stature and attractiveness. Emotional states and personality characteristics are also judged from vocal stimuli. The research contained in this thesis examines vocal masculinity, aesthetics and personality, with an emphasis on the perception of prosocial traits including trustworthiness and cooperativeness. I will also explore themes which are more cognitive in nature, testing aspects of vocal stimuli which may affect trait attribution, memory and the ascription of identity. Chapters 2 and 3 explore systematic differences across vocal utterances, both in types of utterance using different classes of stimuli and across the time course of perception of the auditory signal. These chapters examine variation in acoustic measurements in addition to variation in listener attributions of commonly-judged speaker traits. The most important result from this work was that evaluations of attractiveness made using spontaneous speech correlated with those made using scripted speech recordings, but did not correlate with those made of the same persons using vowel stimuli. This calls into question the use of sustained vowel sounds for the attainment of ratings of subjective characteristics. Vowel and single-word stimuli are also quite short – while I found that attributions of masculinity were reliable at very short exposure times, more subjective traits like attractiveness and trustworthiness require a longer exposure time to elicit reliable attributions. I conclude with recommending an exposure time of at least 5 seconds in duration for such traits to be reliably assessed. Chapter 4 examines what vocal traits affect perceptions of pro-social qualities using both natural and manipulated variation in voices. While feminine pitch traits (F0 and F0-SD) were linked to cooperativeness ratings, masculine formant traits (Df and Pf) were also associated with cooperativeness. The relative importance of these traits as social signals is discussed. Chapter 5 questions what makes a voice memorable, and helps to differentiate between memory for individual voice identities and for the content which was spoken by administering recognition tests both within and across sensory modalities. While the data suggest that experimental manipulation of voice pitch did not influence memory for vocalised stimuli, attractive male voices were better remembered than unattractive voices, independent of pitch manipulation. Memory for cross-modal (textual) content was enhanced by raising the voice pitch of both male and female speakers. I link this pattern of results to the perceived dominance of voices which have been raised and lowered in pitch, and how this might impact how memories are formed and retained. Chapter 6 examines masculinity across visual and auditory sensory modalities using a cross-modal matching task. While participants were able to match voices to muted videos of both male and female speakers at rates above chance, and to static face images of men (but not women), differences in masculinity did not influence observers in their judgements, and voice and face masculinity were not correlated. These results are discussed in terms of the generally-accepted theory that masculinity and femininity in faces and voices communicate the same underlying genetic quality. The biological mechanisms by which vocal and facial masculinity could develop independently are speculated

Face and voice attractiveness judgments change during adolescence

Attractivenessjudgments are thought to underpin adaptive mate choice decisions. We investigated how these judgmentschange during adolescence when mate choice is becoming relevant. Adolescents aged 11–15 evaluated faces and voices manipulated along dimensions that affect adults' judgments of attractiveness and that are thought to cue mate value. Facial stimuli consisted of pairs of faces that were more or less average, more or less feminine, or more or less symmetric. The adolescents selected the more average, symmetric, and feminine faces as more attractive more often than chance, but judgments of some facial traits differed significantly with rater age and sex, indicating a role of development in judgments of facial cues. Vocal stimuli consisted of pairs of voices manipulated to raise or lower perceived pitch. The older but not younger girls selected the lower-pitched male voices as more attractive at rates above chance, while the younger but not older boys selected the higher-pitched female voices as more attractive. Controlling for rater age, increased pubertal development was associated with increased selection of lower-pitched boys' voices by girls and decreased selection of feminized male faces by boys. Our results are the first to demonstrate that adolescents show somewhat similar attractivenessjudgments to adults in age-matched stimuli and that age, sex, and pubertal development have measurable effects on adolescents' attractivenessjudgments. They suggest that attractivenessjudgments in humans, at least for some traits, are facultatively calibrated to the individual's life stage, only reaching adult values upon sexual maturity when mate choice decisions become relevant

The behavioural impact of a visually represented virtual assistant in a selfservice checkout context

Our research investigated whether the presence of an interface agent - or virtual assistant (VA) - in a self-service checkout context has behavioural effects on the transaction process during particular tasks. While many participants claimed to have not noticed a VA within the self-service interface, behaviour was still affected, i.e. fewer people made errors with the VA present than in the voice-only and control conditions. The results are explained as reflective of an unconscious observation of non-verbal cues exhibited by the VA. The results are discussed in relation to possible behavioural outcomes of VA presence.</p