Abstract
<p>This study investigates the effects of emotional voices (expressing neutral emotion, sadness, and happiness) on a judgement of a speaker’s age. An experiment was conducted to explore whether happy voices sound younger than neutral and sad voices. The identification of 24 speakers’ ages (12 of each gender) based on their emotional voices was done by 40 participants. The speakers’ ages were 24-75 years. Participants identified the age of each speaker only by hearing his/her emotional voice. The results showed that when a speaker spoke with a happy voice, participants estimated their age to be younger than their chronological age. Furthermore, the results regarding female happy voices were more conspicuous than male happy voices. In contrast, when a speaker spoke with a sad voice, participants estimated them to be older. The results suggest that a happy voice sounds younger because of its higher voice pitch (<em>F0</em>). We discussed the role of vocal pitch and other paralinguistic factors for providing an aging impression.</p>
Highlights
It is generally believed that a smiling face makes a speaker look younger
Voelkle et al (2012) found that age estimation ability decreased with age; facial expressions had a substantial impact on the accuracy and bias of age estimation and relative to other facial expressions, the age of neutral faces was estimated most accurately while the age of faces displaying happy expressions was most likely underestimated
A further analysis was conducted to explore the effect of vocal emotion in each gender
Summary
It is generally believed that a smiling face makes a speaker look younger. Most models for cosmetic advertisements smile to highlight the cosmetics’ effect of giving a younger appearance. As indicated by Ganel (2015), only one study has examined the effects of smiling on perceived age (Voelkle, Ebner, Lindenberger, & Riediger, 2012). In contrast to their findings, Ganel (2015) reported that across different experimental conditions and stimulus sets, smiling faces were consistently perceived as older compared to the same persons’ neutral faces. Ganel (2015) suggested that the effect reported by Voelkle et al (2012) is due to observer failure to ignore smile-associated wrinkles, mainly along the region of the eyes In contrast to their findings, Ganel (2015) reported that across different experimental conditions and stimulus sets, smiling faces were consistently perceived as older compared to the same persons’ neutral faces. Ganel (2015) suggested that the effect reported by Voelkle et al (2012) is due to observer failure to ignore smile-associated wrinkles, mainly along the region of the eyes
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