Good vibrations: A review of vocal expressions of positive emotions

Abstract

Researchers examining nonverbal communication of emotions are becoming increasingly interested in differentiations between different positive emotional states like interest, relief, and pride. But despite the importance of the voice in communicating emotion in general and positive emotion in particular, there is to date no systematic review of what characterizes vocal expressions of different positive emotions. Furthermore, integration and synthesis of current findings are lacking. In this review, we comprehensively review studies (N = 108) investigating acoustic features relating to specific positive emotions in speech prosody and nonverbal vocalizations. We find that happy voices are generally loud with considerable variability in loudness, have high and variable pitch, and are high in the first two formant frequencies. When specific positive emotions are directly compared with each other, pitch mean, loudness mean, and speech rate differ across positive emotions, with patterns mapping onto clusters of emotions, so-called emotion families. For instance, pitch is higher for epistemological emotions (amusement, interest, relief), moderate for savouring emotions (contentment and pleasure), and lower for a prosocial emotion (admiration). Some, but not all, of the differences in acoustic patterns also map on to differences in arousal levels. We end by pointing to limitations in extant work and making concrete proposals for future research on positive emotions in the voice.

Terapia Comunitária Integrativa em Tempos de Pandemia: Encontros, encantos, (con)vivências e partilhas que transcendem as telas

“…João Pessoa, Brasil, 2020. (Damásio, 1996;Joaquim, 2020;Vasco, 2013); 3 (Damásio, 1996;Damásio, 2011); 4 (Kamiloğlu et al, 2020;Sauter, 2017); 6 (Santos, 2020). Fonte: Autores.…”

“…Tala (2019), ao revisar a gratidão, relata que esse fenômeno envolve várias áreas cerebrais. Ela cita diversos trabalhos sobre os benefícios da gratidão para a saúde; dentre eles, destaca-se a relação positiva entre gratidão e emoções positivas, satisfação com a vida, comportamentos pró-sociais e melhor qualidade de vida (Kamiloğlu et al, 2020;Tala, 2019). Vale ressaltar que as técnicas positivas de psiquiatria e psicologia são recomendadas durante pandemias (Ornell et al, 2020).…”

Beyond Correlation: Acoustic Transformation Methods for the Experimental Study of Emotional Voice and Speech

“…Analysing large corpora of speech or vocalizations to establish e.g. that happy voices have statistically higher F0s, faster rate and more animated intonations (Banse and Scherer 1996; for a recent review, see Kamiloglu et al 2019) do not allow us to conclude that these features are biological signals that are causally involved in either the decoding of these emotions. For instance, it is now relatively well-described that smiling, the bilateral contraction of the zygomatics facial muscles, has perceivable acoustic consequences on the speaking voice that can be heard, e.g., on the phone (Tartter and Braun 1994).…”

Superior communication of positive emotions through nonverbal vocalisations compared to speech prosody

“…In recent years, researchers examining vocal communication of emotions are increasingly differentiating between distinct positive emotional states. There is empirical evidence showing that several positive emotions are expressed with vocal expressions characterised by distinct acoustic patterns, and that they can be recognised by naïve listeners (see Kamiloğlu, Fischer, & Sauter, 2020 for a review). However, studies to date have tended to include only a few categories of positive emotions, and have focused on either nonverbal vocalisations or speech prosody.…”