Integration of literal meaning of emotional phrases with vocal emotion: Comparison between Japanese and North Americans

Abstract

This study investigated how the display rules of emotional expression apply in vocal-only communication depending on speakers’ and listeners’ cultural backgrounds and their similarities and differences. A comparison was made between Japanese and North American participants, who listened to emotional phrases spoken in their native language and a non-native language (English and Japanese, respectively). The participants were instructed to listen carefully to the recordings and judge the speakers’ true emotions. The speakers had been asked to express an emotion with their voice that was either congruent or incongruent with the emotion contained in the literal meaning of speech (ELMS), which, in English, corresponded to: “eleven-thirty,” “good afternoon,” “congratulations,” “I love it,” “I’m going to cry,” and “my heart is breaking.” The speakers spoke these utterances in neutral, happy, and sad voices. The results indicated that the Japanese listeners integrated the ELMS with the vocal emotions when the speakers were Japanese but judged the speakers’ emotions based on voice alone when the speakers were North American. This implied that Japanese participants could infer the speakers’ true emotions even when the ELMS was incongruent with vocal emotion. The results obtained from the Japanese and North American speakers and listeners were compared.