Birds of a Feather Flock Together But Opposites Attract! On the Interaction of F0 Entrainment, Perceived Attractiveness, and Conversational Quality in Dating Conversations

Abstract

Dating conversations are especially influenced by the interlocutors’ perceived attractiveness. As visual attractiveness determines the course and nature of the interaction, the perceived overall quality of the conversation may also be influenced by the perceived attractiveness and simultaneously also affect the further development of the conversation. Accordingly, perceived attractiveness and conversational quality constantly interact in dating conversations. Studies focusing on the effects of both impressions on a speaker’s vocal behavior in terms of prosodic entrainment, i.e., the adaptation of a speaker’s prosodic features relative to his/her interlocutor, suggest that higher visual attractiveness leads to a greater divergence in f0 in mixed-sex pairs, while greater conversational quality results in larger degrees of f0 entrainment. In this paper, we further investigate the effects of both perceived attractiveness and conversational quality on prosodic entrainment of f0 in dating conversations with a special focus on their interaction. We conducted a dating experiment with 20 young heterosexual singles who engaged in 100 short spontaneous mixed-sex dating conversations. The results suggest that f0 entrainment correlates with both perceived attractiveness and conversational quality. Prosodic entrainment decreased with higher ratings of perceived attractiveness and increased with higher ratings of perceived conversational quality. Additionally, the results indicate that f0 entrainment not only depends on the impressions of attractiveness and conversational quality but also affects them. Furthermore, seemingly conflicting effects may be resolved by emphasizing one effect over the other, e.g., quality over attractiveness. This emphasis seems to depend on speaker sex and may also change during the course of the conversation. The details of this complex interaction, their interdependence, the importance of speaker sex, as well as possible implications are discussed.