To believe or not to believe? How voice and accent information in speech alter listener impressions of trust

Abstract

Our decision to believe what another person says can be influenced by vocally expressed confidence in speech and by whether the speaker-listener are members of the same social group. The dynamic effects of these two information sources on neurocognitive processes that promote believability impressions from vocal cues are unclear. Here, English Canadian listeners were presented personal statements (She has access to the building) produced in a confident or doubtful voice by speakers of their own dialect (in-group) or speakers from two different "out-groups" (regional or foreign-accented English). Participants rated how believable the speaker is for each statement and event-related potentials (ERPs) were analysed from utterance onset. Believability decisions were modulated by both the speaker's vocal confidence level and their perceived in-group status. For in-group speakers, ERP effects revealed an early differentiation of vocally expressed confidence (i.e., N100, P200), highlighting the motivational significance of doubtful voices for drawing believability inferences. These early effects on vocal confidence perception were qualitatively different or absent when speakers had an accent; evaluating out-group voices was associated with increased demands on contextual integration and re-analysis of a non-native representation of believability (i.e., increased N400, late negativity response). Accent intelligibility and experience with particular out-group accents each influenced how vocal confidence was processed for out-group speakers. The N100 amplitude was sensitive to out-group attitudes and predicted actual believability decisions for certain out-group speakers. We propose a neurocognitive model in which vocal identity information (social categorization) dynamically influences how vocal expressions are decoded and used to derive social inferences during person perception.

Keywords: Social perception; accent; feeling of knowing; in-group bias; prosody; speech communication.