Decoding emotional messages: Influence of ethnicity, sex, message type, and channel.

Abstract

In this study, we predicted that sex of sender and receiver, ethnic group of sender, positivity of affect, and communication channel would all influence decoding of emotional messages. Thirty-four male and 47 female Anglo-Australian subjects viewed videotapes of male or female Australian, British, or Italian speakers, who each presented 18 content-ambiguous messages with positive, negative, or neutral affect. Subjects guessed the intended affect in each message. Results of analyses of variance revealed that female encoders were better decoded than male encoders for positive and negative messages on all channels, but female decoders were more accurate than males only in the audiovisual (picture and sound) condition. On all channels, positive messages were decoded least accurately, especially when the speakers were Australian men. In addition, results revealed that although Italian men in the audiovisual condition were decoded worse than other men on neutral and negative messages, in the visual (picture only) condition, Italian men were decoded as well as other men. Italian women were decoded as accurately as other women for positive and neutral messages in both the audiovisual and visual conditions. In the audio (sound only) condition, Italian speakers of both sexes were decoded less accurately than other speakers of their sex. It is suggested that Italian accents were a distractor to decoding and that, on hearing Italian-accented English, Anglo-Australian subjects paid less attention because of more negative attitudes toward male Southern European immigrants. Analysis of errors pointed to the latter explanation, as subjects expected Italian male speakers' affect to be more negative than emotion from other speakers.