When characters impact on dubbing: the role of sexual stereotypes on voice actor/actress’ preferences

Dubbing is a procedure through which an original actor’s voice is replaced with that of a voice actor, usually speaking a different language. Dubbing is not only an adaptation to language but also to cultural beliefs. Across two studies, we analyzed how some Italian participants would prefer a television series’ character to sound. In Study 1, participants read a male/female character description that was manipulated according to gender and sexual stereotypes in order to be masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral. Next, participants were asked to indicate their preference for three voice actors/actresses who sounded heterosexual, gay/lesbian, or ambivalent. Study 2 tested the interplay between a character’s description and the voice of the English-speaking (gay/lesbian vs. heterosexual sounding) actor/actress who played the role in the original television series on dubbing preferences. The results of both studies showed that a character’s description affected dubbing preferences. Participants preferred the gay/lesbian-sounding voice actor/actress to the counter-stereotypical character (i.e., a feminine man or a masculine woman) and the heterosexual-sounding voice actor/actress to the stereotypical character. Interestingly, at least for male targets, the original actor’s voice itself affected the preference for voice actors in the same way. This work suggests that dubbing can maintain and reinforce stereotypes.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

A Systematic and Methodological Review of Attentional Biases in Eating Disorders: Food, Body, and Perfectionism

Objective: The current systematic and methodological review aimed to critically review existing literature utilizing implicit processing, or automatic approach- and/or avoidance-related attentional biases between eating disorder (ED) and nonclinical samples, which: (1) highlights how psychophysiological methods advance knowledge of ED implicit bias; (2) explains how findings fit into transdiagnostic versus disorder-specific ED frameworks; and (3) suggests how research can address perfectionism-related ED biases. Method: Three databases were systematically searched to identify studies: Pubmed, Scopus, and PsychInfo electronic databases. Peer-reviewed studies of 18-39-year-olds with both clinical ED and heathy samples assessing visual attentional biases using pictorial and/or linguistic stimuli related to food, body, and/or perfectionism were included. Results: Forty-six studies were included. While behavioral results were often similar across ED diagnoses, studies incorporating psychophysiological measures often revealed disease-specific attentional biases. Specifically, women with bulimia nervosa (BN) tend to approach food and other body types, whereas women with anorexia nervosa (AN) tend to avoid food as well as overweight bodies. Conclusions: Further integration of psychophysiological and behavioral methods may identify subtle processing variations in ED, which may guide prevention strategies and interventions, and provide important clinical implications. Few implicit bias studies include male participants, investigate binge eating disorder, or evaluate perfectionism-relevant stimuli, despite the fact that perfectionism is implicated in models of ED

Food-induced Emotional Resonance Improves Emotion Recognition

The effect of food substances on emotional states has been widely investigated, showing, for example, that eating chocolate is able to reduce negative mood. Here, for the first time, we have shown that the consumption of specific food substances is not only able to induce particular emotional states, but more importantly, to facilitate recognition of corresponding emotional facial expressions in others. Participants were asked to perform an emotion recognition task before and after eating either a piece of chocolate or a small amount of fish sauce – which we expected to induce happiness or disgust, respectively. Our results showed that being in a specific emotional state improves recognition of the corresponding emotional facial expression. Indeed, eating chocolate improved recognition of happy faces, while disgusted expressions were more readily recognized after eating fish sauce. In line with the embodied account of emotion understanding, we suggest that people are better at inferring the emotional state of others when their own emotional state resonates with the observed one

Copying you copying me:Interpersonal motor co-ordination influences automatic imitation

Moving in a co-ordinated fashion with another individual changes our behaviour towards them; we tend to like them more, find them more attractive, and are more willing to co-operate with them. It is generally assumed that this effect on behaviour results from alterations in representations of self and others. Specifically, through neurophysiological perception-action matching mechanisms, interpersonal motor co-ordination (IMC) is believed to forge a neural coupling between actor and observer, which serves to blur boundaries in conceptual self-other representations and causes positive views of the self to be projected onto others. An investigation into this potential neural mechanism is lacking, however. Moreover, the specific components of IMC that might influence this mechanism have not yet been specified. In the present study we exploited a robust behavioural phenomenon - automatic imitation - to assess the degree to which IMC influences neural action observation-execution matching mechanisms. This revealed that automatic imitation is reduced when the actions of another individual are perceived to be synchronised in time, but are spatially incongruent, with our own. We interpret our findings as evidence that IMC does indeed exert an effect on neural perception-action matching mechanisms, but this serves to promote better self-other distinction. Our findings demonstrate that further investigation is required to understand the complex relationship between neural perception-action coupling, conceptual self-other representations, and social behaviour

The bodily social self: a link between phenomenal and narrative selfhood

The Phenomenal Self (PS) is widely considered to be dependent on body representations, whereas the Narrative Self (NS) is generally thought to rely on abstract cognitive representations. The concept of the Bodily Social Self (BSS) might play an important role in explaining how the high level cognitive self-representations enabling the NS might emerge from the bodily basis of the PS. First, the phenomenal self (PS) and narrative self (NS), are briefly examined. Next, the BSS is defined and its potential for explaining aspects of social cognition is explored. The minimal requirements for a BSS are considered, before reviewing empirical evidence regarding the development of the BSS over the first year of life. Finally, evidence on the involvement of the body in social distinctions between self and other is reviewed to illustrate how the BSS is affected by both the bottom up effects of multisensory stimulation and the top down effects of social identification

When Characters Impact on Dubbing: The Role of Sexual Stereotypes on Voice Actor/Actress’ Preferences

Dubbing is a procedure through which an original actor's voice is replaced with that of a voice actor, usually speaking a different language. Dubbing is not only an adaptation to language but also to cultural beliefs. Across 2 studies, we analyzed how some Italian participants would prefer a TV series’ character to sound like. In Study 1, participants read a male/female character description that was manipulated according to gender and sexual stereotypes in order to be masculine, feminine or neutral. Next, participants were asked to indicate their preference for 3 voice actors/actresses who sounded heterosexual, gay/lesbian or ambivalent. Study 2 tested the interplay between a character’s description and the voice of the English-speaking (gay/lesbian- vs. heterosexual-sounding) actor/actress who played the role in the original TV series on dubbing preferences. The results of both studies showed that a character's description affected dubbing preferences. Participants preferred the gay/lesbian-sounding voice actor/actress to the counter-stereotypical character (i.e., a feminine man or a masculine woman) and the heterosexual -sounding voice actor/actress to the stereotypical character. Interestingly, at least for male targets, the original actor's voice itself affected the preference for voice actors in the same way. This work suggests that dubbing can maintain and reinforce stereotypes