I Feel Your Voice: Cultural Differences in the Multisensory Perception of Emotion

Cultural differences in emotion perception have been reported mainly for facial expressions and to a lesser extent for vocal expressions. However, the way in which the perceiver combines auditory and visual cues may itself be subject to cultural variability. Our study investigated cultural differenc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2010-09, Vol.21 (9), p.1259-1262
Main Authors: Tanaka, Akihiro, Koizumi, Ai, Imai, Hisato, Hiramatsu, Saori, Hiramoto, Eriko, de Gelder, Beatrice
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Auditory perception
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Cues
Cultural differences
Emotion
Emotional expression
Emotions
Experimentation
Face
Facial Expression
Facial expressions
Female
Happiness
Humans
Information processing
Japan
Japanese culture
Judgment
Male
Netherlands
Perception
Perceptions
Research Reports
Senses
Sensory perception
Social interaction
Social perception
Social psychology
Speech
Speech Perception
Studies
Variability
Verbal communication
Visual Perception
Voice
Young Adult
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Summary:Cultural differences in emotion perception have been reported mainly for facial expressions and to a lesser extent for vocal expressions. However, the way in which the perceiver combines auditory and visual cues may itself be subject to cultural variability. Our study investigated cultural differences between Japanese and Dutch participants in the multisensory perception of emotion. A face and a voice, expressing either congruent or incongruent emotions, were presented on each trial. Participants were instructed to judge the emotion expressed in one of the two sources. The effect of to-be-ignored voice information on facial judgments was larger in Japanese than in Dutch participants, whereas the effect of to-be-ignored face information on vocal judgments was smaller in Japanese than in Dutch participants. This result indicates that Japanese people are more attuned than Dutch people to vocal processing in the multisensory perception of emotion. Our findings provide the first evidence that multisensory integration of affective information is modulated by perceivers' cultural background.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797610380698