The Effects of Negative Affect Arousal on Reactions to Speakers

Abstract

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that speakers associated with negative affect and/or frustration will be negatively evaluated. As part of a colour recognition study, the participants in the first experiment listened to tape-recorded colour descriptions by a male speaker of standard English. The tape was either free from noise or punctuated by bursts of white noise. The subjects in the noisy tape condition performed significantly worse on the colour recognition task, and consistent with the hypothesis, judged the speaker less favourably. Participants in the second study listened to the colour descriptions of either a standard or Spanish-accented speaker of English which were presented on tapes with no noise, continuous white noise or bursts of white noise. Colour recognition accuracy was significantly influenced by both noise and accent alone as well as in combination. Accented speakers were responded to more negatively than standard speakers on most measures, including several social evaluation scales. Noise significantly affected other measures, including the ratings of speaker's communication effectiveness, tape responsibility for task difficulty, and ease of understanding. The results, as a whole, suggest that serious attention be given to the negative affect mechanism in the social evaluation of nonstandard speech styles.