The Influence Of Voice Pitch,situation And Emotional State On Perception Of Speaker's Personality Trait

Previous studies have proved that voice pitch affects the perception of the speaker's personality traits.However,in most studies,voice materials,to some extent,had the content of speech.The present study was designed to examine the effect of voice cues on speaker's personality traits.We used the method of content-filtered speech,and Praat software was also used to filter the speech content.In addition,Goldwave was used to adjust the pitch of voice.In study 1,we aimed to explore whether voice pitch influence the perception of the speaker's personality traits under the content-filtered speech condition.If voice pitch alone affected the perception of the speaker's personality traits,the subjects' evaluation of the personality traits of low-pitched and high-pitched voice speakers would be inconsistent under the condition of content-filtered speech.The results of this experiment showed that compared with the personality traits of content-filtered speech,the evaluation of the speakers' kindness,ability,ambition,matureness(except male of higher pitch),and optimism were significantly higher on non-content-filtered speech.Additionally,under the condition of content-filtered speech,only adjusted voice pitch would not influence the perception of the speakers' ability,and women's optimism and kindness.Interpersonal interaction is carried out in the specific situation.It has been proved that people could adjust the pitch of voice according to objects and scenes so as to match them.However,some studies had pointed out that,in different situations,the individual's preference for pitch of voice was various.It was necessary for us to explore the consistency that the evaluation of the speaker's personality traits on the basis of voice cues in various situations.If there was inconsistency,the reason might be that in different situations,the individual's attention to the speaker's personality traits was different.In Experiment 2,we explored whether there was consistency for the evaluation of the speaker's personality according to the sound cue(pitch)in the context of the two negative situations.Results showed that in the two kinds of negative situations,the male with lower pitch voice was evaluated as more honest and friendly,more capable,more ambitious,more mature;the female with higher pitch voice was considered as brighter.The results also showed that the evaluations of the men's honesty,friendliness,ability,ambition,and matureness and the women's optimism were consistent in the two situations.In the context of crime,higher pitched women's voice was rated as significantly more friendly,more honest,more capable,and more ambitious.Under the circumstance of derailment,lower pitched women's voice was considered as significantly more honest,more capable,more ambitious,and more mature.The results of this study demonstrated that in the crime and derailment situations,the evaluations of the speaker's personality traits were not completely consistent.Trust is the foundation of the interpersonal relationship,and trust plays a very important role in interpersonal communication.Being trust can reduce the cost of cooperation and improve the efficiency of cooperation.Many factors can affect trust,such as perceiver's emotional state and traits,personality of the speaker,speaker's expression,the rules of cooperation,and past experience.Mayer and Schoorman(1995)believed that to generate trust needed four conditions,they are,the ability,goodwill,and integrity of people being trusted,and the trait of the believer.The ability,kindness,and integrity could be called as the traits of the trusted.In Experiment 3,we explored whether the emotional states of the participants affected the perception of the speaker's traits and the trust investment.If there were significant differences on the evaluations of speaker's ability,friendliness,and integrity,the emotional state would affect the perception of speaker's trust.The experimental results showed that the three kinds of subjects' emotional states did not affect the perception of the characteristics of the speaker's trust(integrity,trustworthy,ability,and friendliness).Evaluations of strange male speakers' integrity,trustworthy,and friendliness were significantly more negative than the evaluation of the strange female speakers'.By contrast,there was no gender difference on perception of the speaker's ability.The emotional states of the subjects affected the trust investment of the speaker,and there existed gender difference.Under the condition of positive and neutral emotion,the subjects' trust for the female speaker was significantly more positive than that for the male speakers'.There was no gender difference for trust investment under the negative emotional state.Based on the above three experiments,we found that the content of speech(clarity),the specific situation,and the pitch affect the perception of the speaker's personality traits.In addition,emotional states affected the trust investment.