Social power and recognition of emotional prosody: High power is associated with lower recognition accuracy than low power.

Abstract

Listeners have to pay close attention to a speaker’s tone of voice (prosody) during daily conversations. This is particularly important when trying to infer the emotional state of the speaker. Although a growing body of research has explored how emotions are processed from speech in general, little is known about how psychosocial factors such as social power can shape the perception of vocal emotional attributes. Thus, the present studies explored how social power affects emotional prosody recognition. In a correlational study (Study 1) and an experimental study (Study 2), we show that high power is associated with lower accuracy in emotional prosody recognition than low power. These results, for the first time, suggest that individuals experiencing high or low power perceive emotional tone of voice differently.

Early and late brain signatures of emotional prosody among individuals with high versus low power

“…For the first time, we explored ERP patterns of individuals primed with feeling either low or high in power, focusing on three different processing stages. The goal of this investigation was to shed light on the underlying mechanisms of previously reported power differences observed in behavioral data (Uskul et al, ). Our data did not reveal any differences between low versus high power groups in the N1 component, suggesting that the two groups did not differ in how acoustical attributes were extracted in this initial sensory processing stage.…”

“…In contrast to some previous reports (e.g., Paulmann et al, ; Schirmer et al, ), the current study presented fewer than 30 trials per emotional category condition, as we followed the same experimental design applied in Uskul et al (). This number was further reduced after removing EEG artifacts, leading to a lower signal‐to‐noise ratio of our data in comparison to the majority of previous studies.…”

“…Sample size was determined on the basis of effect sizes observed in previous ERP studies (e.g., Paulmann & Kotz, ). The procedures used to prime high versus low power and the emotion recognition task were identical to those used in our previous study (Uskul et al, ) and as introduced by Galinsky and colleagues (2003). This priming method has been shown to effectively induce a feeling of holding or lacking power as indicated in differences of self‐reported power scores (i.e., manipulation check).…”

“…Findings from this research show that both generalized sense of power measured as an individual difference variable as well as temporary feelings of holding high versus low power are associated with accuracy in recognizing emotions from voice. Specifically, individuals who hold a strong sense of power (Study 1) as well as those primed with feelings of powerfulness (Study 2) are less accurate in recognizing emotions from prosody than individuals who hold a weak sense of power or those primed with feelings of powerlessness (Uskul et al, ; see below for further details); however, the underlying cause for this effect is yet unknown. The present investigation aims to fill this gap.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, there has been only one previous attempt to explore the relationship between social power and prosody conveying basic emotions. In a correlational and an experimental study, Uskul et al () demonstrated that holding power is linked to lower accuracy in emotional prosody recognition. In the experimental part of that study, participants were primed using the above‐described recall task to prime high versus low power (Galinsky et al, ).…”