Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of York, UK.
Br J Psychol. 2021 Feb;112(1):282-300. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12454. Epub 2020 May 23.
From only a single spoken word, listeners can form a wealth of first impressions of a person's character traits and personality based on their voice. However, due to the substantial within-person variability in voices, these trait judgements are likely to be highly stimulus-dependent for unfamiliar voices: The same person may sound very trustworthy in one recording but less trustworthy in another. How trait judgements differ when listeners are familiar with a voice is unclear: Are listeners who are familiar with the voices as susceptible to the effects of within-person variability? Does the semantic knowledge listeners have about a familiar person influence their judgements? In the current study, we tested the effect of familiarity on listeners' trait judgements from variable voices across 3 experiments. Using a between-subjects design, we contrasted trait judgements by listeners who were familiar with a set of voices - either through laboratory-based training or through watching a TV show - with listeners who were unfamiliar with the voices. We predicted that familiarity with the voices would reduce variability in trait judgements for variable voice recordings from the same identity (cf. Mileva, Kramer & Burton, Perception, 48, 471 and 2019, for faces). However, across the 3 studies and two types of measures to assess variability, we found no compelling evidence to suggest that trait impressions were systematically affected by familiarity.
仅从一个人说的一个词，听话者就能根据其声音形成对这个人的性格特征和个性的丰富第一印象。然而，由于声音在个体内部存在很大的可变性，这些特质判断对于不熟悉的声音很可能高度依赖于刺激：同一个人在一个录音中可能听起来非常值得信赖，但在另一个录音中可能就不太值得信赖。当听话者熟悉一个声音时，特质判断会有何不同尚不清楚：熟悉声音的听话者是否同样容易受到个体内变异性的影响？听话者对熟悉的人的语义知识是否会影响他们的判断？在当前的研究中，我们通过 3 个实验测试了熟悉度对听话者从可变声音中进行特质判断的影响。我们采用了被试间设计，通过实验室基础训练或观看电视节目来对比熟悉一组声音的听话者与不熟悉这些声音的听话者的特质判断。我们预测，熟悉声音会减少同一身份的可变语音录音中的特质判断的可变性（参见 Mileva、Kramer 和 Burton，Perception，48，471 和 2019，用于面孔）。然而，在 3 项研究和两种评估可变性的度量标准中，我们没有发现令人信服的证据表明特质印象会受到熟悉度的系统影响。
