Vocal Changes

Next, we will discuss vocal changes associated with positive emotions.  First, let’s discuss Sauter et al.’s (2010) study, which you can review here.  Pay attention to any limitations discussed about this study.

 

In this study, participants matched an emotional story to a corresponding vocal sound for positive and negative emotions. Recall that in this study Himba and English participants listened to the vocal sound from a Himba voice and an English voice. In this study, positive emotions or feelings could be achievement/pride, amusement, sensual pleasure, and relief.  In Figures 8 and 9, note that all positive emotions met the 2 out of 4 threshold, except for relief (Figure 8) and sensory pleasure (Figure 9).  Why would relief and sensory pleasure not be universally recognized?  It could be a methodological problem – maybe the story or the voice did not accurately convey the emotion. Alternatively, it could be sensory pleasure and relief are not universal emotions.

In Cordaro, Keltner, and colleagues’ (2016) study on vocal change (review here), participants in 10 industrialized countries (Table 17) and Bhutanese participants (Figure 10) again matched stories to a vocal sound . Most of the percentages are above 50%, which in general would suggest that each of these nine feeling states have a universal vocal sound. Look at figures 10, and 11.  Which positive emotion showed the lowest recognition rates?  Which countries showed recognition rates lower than 50 and for which emotion?

Sauter and Scott (2007) sought to identify universal vocal changes for five positive emotions: achievement, amusement, contentment, pleasure, and relief. Participants from London and Sweden participated in this study. Prior to the study, male and female British-speaking actors were given a list of scenarios and asked to provide a non-verbal vocal sound to convey each emotion in the scenario.
Participants first completed a categorization task in which they heard the non-verbal vocal sound and then selected one emotion label from a list of five options: achievement/triumph, amusement, contentment, sensual pleasure, and relief. Each emotion label was shown with the corresponding emotion scenario (see Table 18). Following the categorization task, participants listened to each vocal sound and rated how much each sound represented each of the five emotions on a 1 to 7 scale.

Table 19 displays the categorization results. In general, both British and Swedish participants selected the correct emotion label for each emotion sound (indicated by the red). A majority of British participants correctly matched each emotion to each vocal sound, although contentment barely made the 50% threshold. Except for contentment, a majority of Swedish participants correctly identified each vocal sound. It is interesting that for both groups, the contentment vocal sound was the least recognized. In Table 19, we can also identify the wrong answers participants provided for each emotion. For the contentment sound, about 25.2 % of British participants and 26.9% of Swedish participants selected pleasure. So, both groups confused contentment and pleasure for the contentment sound. Results showed that Swedish participants performed worse on the categorization task than British participants.

Participants’ self-reported emotions for each vocal sound are displayed in Figure 11.   For most vocal sounds, participants rated the correct emotion as the highest.  For the contentment sound, British participants rated pleasure as the highest whereas Swedish participants rated achievement, sensory pleasure, and amusement higher than contentment.  For relief, Swedish participants rated the relief sound as higher on achievement than relief.

This study provides evidence that participants in two cultures correctly identified several positive emotions.  Two exceptions seem to be contentment and relief.  Sauter and Scott (2007) suggest contentment was not recognized because contentment is either part of the sensory pleasure emotion or because contentment is a low intensity emotion.  It might be that low intensity positive emotions like pleasure and contentment are harder to recognize than high intensity emotions.  Although these emotions were recognized in two cultures, both cultures are Western European countries.  This work should be further tested in additional cultures to provide evidence for universality.

 

Gendron, Barrett et al. (2014a) (review study  here) looked at vocal changes for positive emotions – amusement, relief, sensory pleasure, and triumph/pride. Remember in this study, participants heard the sound and then free-labeled the emotion. Then, researchers coded the free label into an emotion category.  The vocal sounds used for each emotion are displayed in Table 20.

Findings in Figure 12 show that amusement was the only positive emotion identified by both groups.  A majority of U.S. participants correctly identified relief, but the Himba did not. For sensory pleasure and triumph, researchers did not find that a majority U.S. or Himba participants correctly identified the vocal sound.  Results showed that Himba participants free labeled responses for “woo hoo” were either non-emotion related or related to the emotion amusement.   For the feelings relief and sensory pleasure, a majority of Himba participants labeled the sound as no emotion.

Now, a large group of Himba and US participants did identify the positive valence of the sounds for amusement and triumph (see Figure 13), supporting some constructivist views that emotions are simply a range of valence and arousal.  For relief, only a majority of the U.S. participants agreed the relief sound was positive in valence.  For sensory pleasure, the researchers did not find that a majority of U.S. or Himba participants agreed the “mmm-mmm” sound was positive.