The Effects of Culture on Voice Likabilty

Pajupuu, Hille; Altrov, Rene; Pajupuu, Jaan

doi:10.3176/tr.2019.2.08

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Moreover, an individual's voice can vary on the basis of cultural background and communication context, but voice use also changes on the basis of relationships people have with specific people and groups. For example, intimate relationships lead people to use their voice differently compared with formal, professional relationships (Ding et al 2017(Ding et al , 2018Pajupuu Altrov & Pajupuu 2019;Yiu, Murdoch, Hird, Lau & Ho 2008).…”

Section: Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

Nativeness perception and speaker voice as predictors of (non-)native English speaker evaluations in four ELF contexts

Nejjari¹

2022

Preprint

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We investigated to what extent responses (N=6617) by four non-native English listener groups (The Netherlands: n=1701; Germany: n=1606; Spain: n=1647; Singapore: n=1663) assigned nativeness to standard, native British and American English accents, compared with a typical Dutch English accent. We assessed to what extent assigned nativeness impacted speaker evaluations (status, affect, dynamism), and to what extent a speaker's voice influenced speaker evaluations by analyzing listener responses to verbal and matched guises. Results showed that perceptions of a speaker's nativeness significantly impacted speaker evaluations on all dimensions, and therefore we conclude that speaker evaluations are also based on perceptions of the nativeness of a speaker. In addition, speaker evaluations were influenced by a speaker's voice to such an extent that this can lead to significantly more positive/negative speaker evaluations of both native and non-native English speakers. Finally, this study confirms the relevance and superiority of the matched-guise technique in accentedness research, compared with the verbal-guise technique, since the former successfully minimizes the actual impact of voice.

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Section: Voicementioning

confidence: 99%

Nativeness perception and speaker voice as predictors of (non-)native English speaker evaluations in four ELF contexts

Nejjari¹

2022

Preprint

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“…A preference for lower voices has been evidenced by both research on advertising but also by general studies on voice likability and attractiveness (e.g., Chattopadhyay et al 2003, Dubey et al 2018, Klofstad et al 2012, Martín-Santana et al 2015, Rodero et al 2013, Weiss, Burkhart 2012), yet this may not always be the case: there are studies where lower voices were only preferred for men and not women (e.g., Tsantani et al 2016) and vice versa, a low voice was important for women but not men (e.g., Babel et al 2014). Voice preference may also depend on the culture (e.g., Baus et al 2019, Pajupuu et al 2019, Weiss et al 2021b.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although suitability and likability evaluations are subjective, there is a wide intra-cultural consensus on voice assessments (e.g., Baus et al 2019, Pajupuu et al 2019, Weiss et al 2021b). Yet even after the studies in Weiss et al (2021a), there is still room to expand the knowledge of which acoustic features are characteristic of an attractive voice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The respective extant research results are difficult to compare, as attractivity has been studied for different aims and based on varying speech material, the raters have been of different age groups, studies have been carried out in different cultures, the focus has been on different acoustic features, and so forth. Voice likability may not be apparent in just one, or a few acoustic features, but is likely a combination of several acoustic features (e.g., Babel et al 2014, Eyben et al 2013b, Pajupuu et al 2019.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Preference of voice and performance style in radio advertising

Pajupuu,

Altrov,

Pajupuu

2024

ERYa

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This study sought to find out which style of radio advertisement performance listeners consider likable, and which acoustic features differentiate the likable from the unlikable. The same spokespersons presented a gender neutral pretend-advertisement in two styles: calm and energetic. Listeners had to rate the likability of the performances. The results showed that listener likability scores were consistent and did not depend on listener gender. The listeners overwhelmingly preferred advertisements presented in a calm style, regardless of the performer or their age or gender. For each advertisement, 88 parameters of the extended Geneva Minimalistic Acoustic Parameter Set (eGeMAPS) were calculated. Most of these significantly differentiated likable and unlikable performances. Likable performances were characterised by lower pitch, faster articulation rate, a quieter voice with no abrupt changes in loudness, and a breathy voice. The study showed the importance of determining which performance style listeners prefer, as the voice of the performer is directly affected by the performance style. Listeners might like a voice in one style, but not the other.

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“…Their studies have shown that the gender of the spokesperson had no impact on the efficacy of advertisements of non-gender imaged products. However, in the selection of the spokesperson the likability of the spokesperson's voice should be taken into account, which in turn is impacted by both culture and speech style (Altrov et al, 2018;Baus et al, 2019;Pajupuu et al, 2019;Weiss et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robot reads ads: likability of calm and energetic audio advertising styles transferred to synthesized voices

Pajupuu

Altrov

et al. 2023

Front. Commun.

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The increasing prevalence of audio advertising has provided a challenge to find out more about voices and performance styles used in advertisements. In this study, we were interested in the listeners' preferences when a synthesizer performs the advertisements. As training an advertisement style synthesizer requires big corpora, the creation of which is time-consuming and expensive, we have chosen to use less resource-intensive style transfer on already extant synthesized voices trained on neutral speech. We used a corpus of advertisements created out of 120 male and 120 female voices reading one text in both an energetic and calm advertisement style, the styles most commonly provided by advertising agencies, to train four style transfer models: energetic and calm for both male and female voices. These were used to convert two synthesized female and two male voices that had been created using a Merlin-based speech synthesizer for Estonian. Each converted voice performed three short advertisements. Adult listeners rated the likability of the performances on a 7-point Likert scale. The results showed that the calm performance style was overwhelmingly preferred. We also ascertained the acoustic features of the calm and energetic performances using the open-source toolkit openSMILE to calculate the 88 parameters of the extended Geneva Minimalistic Acoustic Parameter Set. The calm style differed from the energetic in acoustic features that are related to a lower, quieter, and more sonorous voice and a more neutral speaking style. Considering the difference in style ratings, it is worth taking the target audiences' style preferences into account.

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The Effects of Culture on Voice Likabilty

Cited by 5 publications

References 35 publications

Nativeness perception and speaker voice as predictors of (non-)native English speaker evaluations in four ELF contexts

Nativeness perception and speaker voice as predictors of (non-)native English speaker evaluations in four ELF contexts

Preference of voice and performance style in radio advertising

Robot reads ads: likability of calm and energetic audio advertising styles transferred to synthesized voices

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