Trait Judgements of Multimodal Emotional Cues

Abstract

It is well known that people's perceptions of traits, such as trustworthiness or dominance, are influenced by their facial expressions (Van Der Zant et al., 2021). While studies regarding trait judgements and emotional cues have primarily been based on facial expressions, with literature beginning to analyse postural cues, few studies have explored this judgement concerning vocal emotional cues. As people do not only receive facial expressions when forming judgements about other people's traits, this study aims to examine the trait judgements of participants when presented with faces and voices that portray various emotions. Participants (N = 89) judged the trustworthiness and dominance of four identities (Female N = 2, Male N = 2) displaying four emotions (angry, happy, sad, neutral) via facial and vocal emotional cues. The video clips displayed congruent emotional expressions (both cues express the same emotion) or incongruent expressions (cues express different emotions). As predicted, happy facial expressions were judged to be the most trustworthy and angry facial and vocal expressions were viewed as most dominant. Contrary to predictions, participants perceived neutral voice cues as more trustworthy than all other emotion cues. Participants rated incongruent happy face and neutral voice cues as more trustworthy than congruent happy cues. Congruent angry stimuli were perceived as more dominant than all other incongruent stimuli. The results demonstrate that vocal emotional expressions can influence trait judgements of others.