On the Perception of Emotional “Voices”: A Cross-Cultural Comparison among American, French and Italian Subjects

Abstract

Does a global world mean a common perception? Is the rather universal use of the American English Language as about a tool of communication among different cultures spread out enough to bring a universal perception of emotional states? How much of the supra-segmental emotional information is captured by non-native speakers and how well do the native ones perform? The present work aims to investigate how different cultures perceive emotional American English voices. In particular the comparison reported is among American, French and Italian subjects. They were tested on the perception of emotional voices extracted from American English movies. The assumption is that the recognition of the emotional states expressed by the actors/actresses will change according to the familiarity of the languages and the expositions of the subjects to the cultural environment. The results show that identification of emotional voices depends on the native language of the listener, since the ability of Italian subjects to recognize emotional information from American vocal cues differs significantly from American and French subjects.