Cross-cultural recognition of basic emotions through nonverbal emotional vocalizations

Abstract

Emotional signals are crucial for sharing important information, with conspecifics, for example, to warn humans of danger. Humans use a range of different cues to communicate to others how they feel, including facial, vocal, and gestural signals. We examined the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams and laughs, across two dramatically different cultural groups. Western participants were compared to individuals from remote, culturally isolated Namibian villages. Vocalizations communicating the so-called “basic emotions” (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise) were bidirectionally recognized. In contrast, a set of additional emotions was only recognized within, but not across, cultural boundaries. Our findings indicate that a number of primarily negative emotions have vocalizations that can be recognized across cultures, while most positive emotions are communicated with culture-specific signals

Pitch underlies activation of the vocal system during affective vocalization

“…Listeners can reliably recognize a broad range of vocally expressed emotions, even when the spoken words are unrelated to the emotion (Fairbanks and Pronovost, 1938;Belin et al, 2008;SimonThomas et al, 2009) or when recordings are filtered to remove segmental content (Lieberman and Michaels, 1962). Unlike the words that make up the segmental aspect of speech, affective vocalizations can be recognized across languages (Laukka et al, 2013), between cultures that have had only minimal historical contact (Sauter et al, 2010)-although with some cultural variation (Scherer and Wallbott, 1994)-and across species (Faragó et al, 2014). Indeed, infants who are hearing-impaired produce affective vocalizations that are acoustically similar to those of normal-hearing infants (Scheiner et al, 2004(Scheiner et al, , 2006.…”

No laughing matter: How the presence of laughing witnesses changes the perception of insults.

“…Indeed, laughter is universally recognized as an expression of joy (Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010), and it is associated with bonding, agreement, and affection (Scott, Lavan, Chen, & McGettigan, 2014). Moreover, laughter is often seen as a way in which negative emotional experiences can be "de-escalated" (Bloch, Haase, & Levenson, 2014;Scott et al, 2014;Yuan, McCarthy, Holley, & Levenson, 2010).…”

O reconhecimento de expressões faciais e prosódia emocional: investigação preliminar em uma amostra brasileira jovem

“…Sabe-se que o poder de reconhecimento e expressão pode ser mediado pela exposição às regras culturais que estimulam ou difi cultam essas habilidades (Elfenbein, 2013). No entanto, a presente pesquisa corrobora pesquisas anteriores (Beaupre, 2005;Biehl et al, 1997;Ekman, 1972;Ekman & Friesen, 1969;Matsumoto, 1990Matsumoto, , 1992Matsumoto & Hwang, 2011;Matsumoto, Hwang, & Yamada, 2010;Sauter et al, 2010), que apontam para altos índices de reconhecimento de expressões faciais semelhantes em diferentes culturas.…”

“…No entanto, um reconhecimento bidirecional entre duas culturas (tribo himba -Namíbia e ingleses), dentro das categorias das emoções bási-cas, foi identifi cado para vocalizações emocionais como gritos, gargalhadas, murmuros, choros, entre outros (Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010).…”