Walter-Terrill Robert, Ongchoco Joan Danielle K, Scholl Brian J
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8047.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Apr;122(13):e2415254122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415254122. Epub 2025 Mar 24.
When talking to other people, we naturally form impressions based not only on what they say but also on how they say it-e.g., how confident they sound. In modern life, however, the sounds of voices are often determined not only by intrinsic qualities (such as vocal anatomy) but also by extrinsic properties (such as videoconferencing microphone quality). Here, we show that such superficial auditory properties can have surprisingly deep consequences for higher-level social judgments. Listeners heard short narrated passages (e.g., from job application essays) and then made various judgments about the speakers. Critically, the recordings were modified to simulate different microphone qualities, while carefully equating listeners' comprehension of the words. Though the manipulations carried no implications about the speakers themselves, common disfluent auditory signals (as in "tinny" speech) led to decreased judgments of intelligence, hireability, credibility, and romantic desirability. These effects were robust across speaker gender and accent, and they occurred for both human and clearly artificial (computer-synthesized) speech. Thus, just as judgments from written text are influenced by factors such as font fluency, judgments from speech are not only based on its content but also biased by the superficial vehicle through which it is delivered. Such effects may become more relevant as daily communication via videoconferencing becomes increasingly widespread.
在与他人交谈时，我们自然而然地不仅会根据他们所说的内容，还会根据他们说话的方式来形成印象——例如，他们听起来有多自信。然而，在现代生活中，声音往往不仅由内在特质（如发声解剖结构）决定，还由外在特性（如视频会议麦克风的质量）决定。在此，我们表明，这些表面的听觉特性可能会对更高层次的社会判断产生惊人的深刻影响。听众听了简短的叙述段落（如求职申请文章中的段落），然后对说话者做出各种判断。关键在于，录音经过修改以模拟不同的麦克风质量，同时仔细确保听众对单词的理解相同。尽管这些操作与说话者本身并无关联，但常见的不流畅听觉信号（如“尖细”的语音）会导致对智力、可雇佣性、可信度和浪漫吸引力的判断降低。这些影响在说话者的性别和口音方面都很显著，并且在人类语音和明显的人工（计算机合成）语音中都会出现。因此，正如书面文本的判断会受到字体流畅性等因素的影响一样，语音的判断不仅基于其内容，还会受到传递内容的表面媒介的影响。随着通过视频会议进行的日常交流越来越普遍，这种影响可能会变得更加显著。
