School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom.
Institut des Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR 7289, CNRS and Université Aix-Marseille, Marseille, France.
PLoS One. 2018 Oct 4;13(10):e0204991. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204991. eCollection 2018.
It has previously been shown that first impressions of a speaker's personality, whether accurate or not, can be judged from short utterances of vowels and greetings, as well as from prolonged sentences and readings of complex paragraphs. From these studies, it is established that listeners' judgements are highly consistent with one another, suggesting that different people judge personality traits in a similar fashion, with three key personality traits being related to measures of valence (associated with trustworthiness), dominance, and attractiveness. Yet, particularly in voice perception, limited research has established the reliability of such personality judgements across stimulus types of varying lengths. Here we investigate whether first impressions of trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness of novel speakers are related when a judgement is made on hearing both one word and one sentence from the same speaker. Secondly, we test whether what is said, thus adjusting content, influences the stability of personality ratings. 60 Scottish voices (30 females) were recorded reading two texts: one of ambiguous content and one with socially-relevant content. One word (500 ms) and one sentence (3000 ms) were extracted from each recording for each speaker. 181 participants (138 females) rated either male or female voices across both content conditions (ambiguous, socially-relevant) and both stimulus types (word, sentence) for one of the three personality traits (trustworthiness, dominance, attractiveness). Pearson correlations showed personality ratings between words and sentences were strongly correlated, with no significant influence of content. In short, when establishing an impression of a novel speaker, judgments of three key personality traits are highly related whether you hear one word or one sentence, irrespective of what they are saying. This finding is consistent with initial personality judgments serving as elucidators of approach or avoidance behaviour, without modulation by time or content. All data and sounds are available on OSF (osf.io/s3cxy).
先前的研究表明，人们可以通过对元音和问候语的简短发音，以及对长句和复杂段落的朗读来判断说话者个性的第一印象，无论这些印象是否准确。这些研究表明，听众的判断彼此高度一致，这表明不同的人以相似的方式判断个性特征，而三个关键的个性特征与衡量值有关（与可信度相关）、支配力和吸引力。然而，特别是在语音感知方面，有限的研究已经确定了在不同长度的刺激类型下，这种个性判断的可靠性。在这里，我们研究了当从同一个说话者听到一个单词和一个句子时，对新说话者的可信度、支配力和吸引力的第一印象是否相关。其次，我们测试了所说的内容是否会影响个性评分的稳定性。我们录制了 60 个苏格兰人的声音（30 个女性），让他们朗读两段文本：一段内容模糊，一段内容与社会相关。每个录音都为每个说话者提取了一个单词（500ms）和一个句子（3000ms）。181 名参与者（138 名女性）在两种内容条件（模糊、与社会相关）和两种刺激类型（单词、句子）下对男性或女性声音进行了评价，评价了三个个性特征之一（可信度、支配力、吸引力）。皮尔逊相关显示，单词和句子之间的个性评价具有很强的相关性，内容没有显著影响。简而言之，当对一个新的说话者形成印象时，无论你听到一个单词还是一个句子，对三个关键个性特征的判断都是高度相关的。这一发现与初始个性判断作为接近或回避行为的阐明者是一致的，不受时间或内容的调节。所有数据和声音都可在 OSF（osf.io/s3cxy）上获得。
