Investigating the phonetic expression of successful motivation

Voße, Jana; Wagner, Petra

doi:10.36505/exling-2018/09/0028/000361

Cited by 3 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…While many speakers may be considerate of the words they use to stimulate others to act, they might underestimate the effect of tone of voice, and this oversight is echoed by a research body that has largely focused on listeners' reactions to semantics rather than prosody in controlling versus autonomy-supportive motivational speech (see Voße & Wagner, 2018;Weinstein et al, 2018 for exceptions). One meaningful way to explore listener reactions to these motivational styles of communicating is in terms of listeners' defiancetheir tense desire to do the opposite of what is askedsince defiance represents a motivationallyrelevant psychological experience that has been previously shown to have meaningful behavioral correlates Pavey & Sparks, 2009;Van Petegem et al, 2015, 2015aWeinstein & Przybylski, 2018).…”

Section: Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don't you say it that way! Experimental evidence that controlling voices elicit defiance

Weinstein

Vansteenkiste

Paulmann

2020

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Motivational messages can be communicated in a controlling or pressuring way, or alternatively, speakers can support listeners' sense of choice and self-initiation. Despite this being a key aspect of daily life, little is known about the outcomes of different motivational tones on listeners' experiences. In three experiments, we tested the extent to which a controllingrather than an autonomy-supportivetone of voice elicited defiance, a tense desire to do the exact opposite of what motivators are asking and hoping for. Study 1 found evidence that motivational speakers using a controlling tone were perceived as more pressuring than supportive and, through these perceptions, they elicited defiant reactions from listeners. Study 2 replicated this effect and identified a perceived controlling style to be the primary predictor of defiance, even when accounting for the reduced warmth and increased power communicated by speakers using controlling tone of voice. In a final study, we observed that both semantics (i.e., words) and prosody (i.e., tone of voice) independently communicate controlling versus autonomy-supportive messages and, through doing so, elicit defiant reactions. Yet, when used in combinationlikely the most typical way that motivators communicate controlthey elicited the most defiance from listeners. Findings are discussed in the context of developmental, organizational, and social literatures which are concerned with how listeners can be best motivated to act.

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Section: Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don't you say it that way! Experimental evidence that controlling voices elicit defiance

Weinstein

Vansteenkiste

Paulmann

2020

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…In this work, we focus on motivation in the context of sports and healthy nutrition and define the term motivation as a process which results in a readiness to act within an individual (Mook, 1987, cited in Rudolph, 2013. This process is complex and can be influenced by several factors, among which are leadership communication (Mayfield and Mayfield, 2018) and phonetics (Voße and Wagner, 2018). It has been discussed and partially shown that specific patterns on the level of language and speech influence the motivating impact of a person positively, while other patterns are assumed to be detrimental in the context of motivation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…MM, E, and DG are claimed to be essential and, therefore, should all occur in motivating language. Voße and Wagner (2018) focus on the acoustic-phonetic expression of motivation. Their hypotheses are inspired by recent studies on emotional speech and charismatic speech.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their hypotheses are inspired by recent studies on emotional speech and charismatic speech. Voße and Wagner (2018) see charisma and motivation as related concepts, as both can evoke an inner change within an individual (Niebuhr and Gonzalez, 2019). Although both concepts overlap in some aspects, charisma is usually described in the context of leadership (Klein and House, 1995;Antonakis et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Motivation is more multifaceted and not necessarily tied to a leader-follower-relation (see Rheinberg and Engeser, 2018 for an overview). Due to the pragmatic proximity of motivation and charisma, Voße and Wagner (2018) expect that acousticphonetic characteristics observed for charismatic speech may also apply toward motivating speech.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How to motivate with speech. Findings from acoustic phonetics and pragmatics

2022

Self Cite

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In the present work, we describe and discuss two studies in the field of motivating-speech research. The studies investigate voice-quality features (study 1) and pragmatic aspects (study 2) in German motivating speech, thereby adding to the current state-of-the-art in understanding motivating speech and language1. We find indications that a low amount of breathiness, a more periodic signal and a balanced distribution of specific pragmatic elements contribute to a motivating impact in German.

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The Prosody of Cheering in Sport Events

Żygis¹,

Wesołek²,

Hosseini-Kivanani³

et al. 2022

Interspeech 2022

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Motivational speaking usually conveys a highly emotional message and its purpose is to invite action. The goal of this paper is to investigate the prosodic realization of one particular type of cheering, namely inciting cheering for single addressees in sport events (here, long-distance running), using the name of that person.31 native speakers of German took part in the experiment. They were asked to cheer up an individual marathon runner in a sporting event represented by video by producing his or her name (1-5 syllables long). For reasons of comparison, the participants also produced the same names in isolation and carrier sentences. Our results reveal that speakers use different strategies to meet their motivational communicative goals: while some speakers produced the runners' names by dividing them into syllables, others pronounced the names as quickly as possible putting more emphasis on the first syllable. A few speakers followed a mixed strategy.Contrary to our expectations, it was not the intensity that mostly contributes to the differences between the different speaking styles (cheering vs. neutral), at least in the methods we were using. Rather, participants employed higher fundamental frequency and longer duration when cheering for marathon runners.

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Investigating the phonetic expression of successful motivation

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Don't you say it that way! Experimental evidence that controlling voices elicit defiance

Don't you say it that way! Experimental evidence that controlling voices elicit defiance

How to motivate with speech. Findings from acoustic phonetics and pragmatics

The Prosody of Cheering in Sport Events

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