Instituto de Biofísica e Engenharia Biomédica, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande 016, 1749-016, Lisboa, Portugal.
Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
Psychol Res. 2022 Mar;86(2):597-616. doi: 10.1007/s00426-021-01498-2. Epub 2021 Mar 15.
Cross-cultural studies of emotion recognition in nonverbal vocalizations not only support the universality hypothesis for its innate features, but also an in-group advantage for culture-dependent features. Nevertheless, in such studies, differences in socio-economic-educational status have not always been accounted for, with idiomatic translation of emotional concepts being a limitation, and the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms still un-researched. We set out to investigate whether native residents from Guinea-Bissau (West African culture) and Portugal (Western European culture)-matched for socio-economic-educational status, sex and language-varied in behavioural and autonomic system response during emotion recognition of nonverbal vocalizations from Portuguese individuals. Overall, Guinea-Bissauans (as out-group) responded significantly less accurately (corrected p < .05), slower, and showed a trend for higher concomitant skin conductance, compared to Portuguese (as in-group)-findings which may indicate a higher cognitive effort stemming from higher difficulty in discerning emotions from another culture. Specifically, accuracy differences were particularly found for pleasure, amusement, and anger, rather than for sadness, relief or fear. Nevertheless, both cultures recognized all emotions above-chance level. The perceived authenticity, measured for the first time in nonverbal cross-cultural research, in the same vocalizations, retrieved no difference between cultures in accuracy, but still a slower response from the out-group. Lastly, we provide-to our knowledge-a first account of how skin conductance response varies between nonverbally vocalized emotions, with significant differences (p < .05). In sum, we provide behavioural and psychophysiological data, demographically and language-matched, that supports cultural and emotion effects on vocal emotion recognition and perceived authenticity, as well as the universality hypothesis.
跨文化的非言语声音情感识别研究不仅支持情感具有先天特征的普遍性假设，也支持文化相关特征的内群体优势。然而，在这些研究中，社会经济教育地位的差异并未得到充分考虑，情感概念的惯用翻译是一个限制，潜在的心理生理机制仍未得到研究。我们着手调查来自几内亚比绍（西非文化）和葡萄牙（西欧文化）的母语居民（社会经济教育地位、性别和语言相匹配）在识别来自葡萄牙个体的非言语声音时，行为和自主神经系统反应是否存在差异。总的来说，与葡萄牙人（内群体）相比，几内亚比绍人（外群体）的反应准确性显著降低（校正后 p < 0.05），反应速度较慢，同时皮肤电导率升高的趋势更为明显，这可能表明由于辨别另一种文化的情感更为困难，认知努力更高。具体而言，在识别愉悦、娱乐和愤怒时，准确性差异尤其明显，而在识别悲伤、宽慰或恐惧时则不然。然而，两种文化都能以高于随机的水平识别所有情感。在非言语跨文化研究中，首次测量到感知真实性，在准确性方面，两种文化之间没有差异，但外群体的反应仍然较慢。最后，我们提供了关于皮肤电反应如何在非言语情感中变化的首次报告，差异显著（p < 0.05）。总之，我们提供了行为和心理生理数据，这些数据在人口统计学和语言上相匹配，支持了文化和情感对声音情感识别和感知真实性的影响，以及普遍性假设。
