Gender differences in identifying emotions from auditory and visual stimuli

Abstract

The present study focused on gender differences in emotion identification from auditory and visual stimuli produced by two male and two female actors. Differences in emotion identification from nonsense samples, language samples and prolonged vowels were investigated. It was also studied whether auditory stimuli can convey the emotional content of speech without visual stimuli, and whether visual stimuli can convey the emotional content of speech without auditory stimuli. The aim was to get a better knowledge of vocal attributes and a more holistic understanding of the nonverbal communication of emotion. Females tended to be more accurate in emotion identification than males. Voice quality parameters played a role in emotion identification in both genders. The emotional content of the samples was best conveyed by nonsense sentences, better than by prolonged vowels or shared native language of the speakers and participants. Thus, vocal non-verbal communication tends to affect the interpretation of emotion even in the absence of language. The emotional stimuli were better recognized from visual stimuli than auditory stimuli by both genders. Visual information about speech may not be connected to the language; instead, it may be based on the human ability to understand the kinetic movements in speech production more readily than the characteristics of the acoustic cues.

Keywords:

• Auditory stimuli
• emotion identification
• gender differences
• non-verbal communication
• nonsense
• visual stimuli
• voice quality

Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to the volunteering participants and the actors, to Tiina Syrjä, D.A., for recruiting the actors and to Nuutti Vapaavuori, M.A., for recording and editing the samples.

Disclosure statement

The author does not report conflicts of interest.