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. 2014 Apr;25(4):911-20.
doi: 10.1177/0956797613517239. Epub 2014 Feb 5.

Cultural relativity in perceiving emotion from vocalizations

Maria Gendron  1 , Debi Roberson, Jacoba Marieta van der Vyver, Lisa Feldman Barrett
Affiliations

Cultural relativity in perceiving emotion from vocalizations

Maria Gendron et al. Psychol Sci. 2014 Apr.

Erratum in

Abstract

A central question in the study of human behavior is whether certain emotions, such as anger, fear, and sadness, are recognized in nonverbal cues across cultures. We predicted and found that in a concept-free experimental task, participants from an isolated cultural context (the Himba ethnic group from northwestern Namibia) did not freely label Western vocalizations with expected emotion terms. Responses indicate that Himba participants perceived more basic affective properties of valence (positivity or negativity) and to some extent arousal (high or low activation). In a second, concept-embedded task, we manipulated whether the target and foil on a given trial matched in both valence and arousal, neither valence nor arousal, valence only, or arousal only. Himba participants achieved above-chance accuracy only when foils differed from targets in valence only. Our results indicate that the voice can reliably convey affective meaning across cultures, but that perceptions of emotion from the voice are culturally variable.

Keywords: affect; cross-cultural differences; emotions; vocalizations.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Cross-cultural comparisons for emotion
Performance for perception of discrete content from the voice. Mean percent (± SEM) discrete emotion agreement is presented on the y-axis. Data are presented by culture and discrete emotion portrayal type (x-axis).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Cross-cultural comparisons for valence
Performance for perception of valence (positive, negative and neutral) content from the voice. Mean percent (± SEM) valence agreement is presented on the y-axis. Data are presented by culture and discrete emotion portrayal type (x-axis).
Figure 3
Figure 3. Cross-cultural comparisons for arousal
Performance for perception of arousal/activation (high, mid, and low) content from the voice. Mean percent (± SEM) of arousal agreement is presented on the y-axis. Data are presented by culture and discrete emotion portrayal type (x-axis).
Figure 4
Figure 4. Himba Forced-Choice Performance
Himba participants’ performance in Study 2 based on the foil condition (x-axis). Mean percentage (± SEM) accuracy to select the correct vocalization is presented on the y-axis.
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Comment in

References

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    1. Boucher JD, Carlson GE. Recognition of facial expressions in three cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 1980;11:263–280.

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