Yale University, School of Management.
Am Psychol. 2017 Oct;72(7):644-654. doi: 10.1037/amp0000147.
This research tests the prediction that voice-only communication increases empathic accuracy over communication across senses. We theorized that people often intentionally communicate their feelings and internal states through the voice, and as such, voice-only communication allows perceivers to focus their attention on the channel of communication most active and accurate in conveying emotions to others. We used 5 experiments to test this hypothesis (N = 1,772), finding that voice-only communication elicits higher rates of empathic accuracy relative to vision-only and multisense communication both while engaging in interactions and perceiving emotions in recorded interactions of strangers. Experiments 4 and 5 reveal that voice-only communication is particularly likely to enhance empathic accuracy through increasing focused attention on the linguistic and paralinguistic vocal cues that accompany speech. Overall, the studies question the primary role of the face in communication of emotion, and offer new insights for improving emotion recognition accuracy in social interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record
本研究检验了这样一种假设，即仅通过声音进行交流相较于跨感官交流能提高共情准确性。我们的理论是，人们经常通过声音有意地传达自己的感受和内在状态，因此，仅通过声音进行交流可以让感知者将注意力集中在最能准确传达情感的交流渠道上。我们使用了 5 项实验来检验这一假设（N=1772），发现与仅通过视觉和多感官进行交流相比，仅通过声音进行交流无论是在互动过程中还是在感知陌生人的记录互动中的情绪时，都能引发更高的共情准确性。实验 4 和 5 表明，仅通过声音进行交流尤其可能通过增加对伴随言语的语言和副语言声音线索的集中注意力来提高共情准确性。总的来说，这些研究对情感交流中面部的主要作用提出了质疑，并为提高社交互动中的情绪识别准确性提供了新的见解。
