Personality in Voices: Individual Differences in Perception and Production

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan R. Schweinberger, since 11/2021
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 419146903

Whenever people see or hear another person, they spontaneously form first impressions from facial or vocal cues, impressions which may be crucial for subsequent social interactions. While certain cues (e.g., gender, age or emotional state) can be perceived with high accuracy, first impressions about personality traits, even when subjectively compelling, are often misleading. Despite significant evidence for personality stereotyping from the voice, “the question of accuracy must be considered still an open one” (Kreiman & Sidtis, 2011, p. 352). Recent research also demonstrated substantial individual differences in the ability to perceive social cues such as emotions or identity in both voices and faces (e.g., Skuk et al., 2017; Skuk & Schweinberger, 2013). In some social perception tasks, individuals with lower levels of autistic traits were found to outperform individuals with high levels of autistic traits. However, there is a lack in research on individual differences in personality perception from the voice, and their associations to autistic traits. This project will systematically 1) investigate impression formation about personality traits from voices, 2) determine the degree to which these impressions exhibit a “Kernel of Truth” (in the sense of informing about a speaker´s real traits), or rather reflect stereotyping based on acoustic features. We will further 3) compare impression formation between spontaneous and standardized speech, 4) investigate the roles of individual differences and autistic traits for both vocal and facial impression formation, and 5) explore associations between perception and production.In the first two experimental sets, listeners will evaluate individual voice recordings (E1) or trait-specific morphed average voices (E2); these trait impressions will be related to speakers’ actual self-rated personality (Big Five). Acoustical analyses will be conducted to further understand the physical bases of vocal impression formation. Individual differences in trait evaluation and their potential association to listeners’ autistic traits will be assessed. In E3, we test the hypothesis that personality perception is altered in individuals with high levels of autistic traits, and compare individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder with two groups of neurotypical individuals scoring either high or low on the autism quotient (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001). In a collaborative effort, we will compare the present paradigm for voices with a paradigm for facial impression formation established by Kramer and Ward (2010). In E4, we hypothesize that the individual ability to voluntarily produce consistently perceived personality cues in the voice is related to the ability to perceive personality in voices – and is also reduced in speakers with high levels of autistic traits. Taken together, we expect that this project will lead to major progress in understanding individual differences in perceiving and expressing personality in the voice.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Verena G. Skuk, until 10/2021