The Relationship of Voice Stress, Anxiety, and Depression to Life Events and Personal Style Variables

Abstract

Two studies of the relationships between environmental events, personal style variables and reaction states were described. In study one the correlations between life events, state anxiety, trait anxiety, and voice stress were measured in 32 male and 32 female subjects. For males there was a significant correlation between life stress scores and state anxiety (r = .43, p < .05). For females there was a significant correlation between voice stress scores and state anxiety (r=.37, p < .05). The implications of these findings for a model of the human stress paradigm were discussed, and improvements in measures were proposed. A second study employed improved measures of life events and voice stress and adding the variables of Type A/ B personal style and depression was done with 24 female and 21 male subjects. More than a dozen significant correlations were found and discussed. Regression analyses indicated that the best predictor of voice stress was negative life events (r = .29, p < .06). The best predictor of depression was trait anxiety (r = .80, p < .001) with gender adding significantly to the prediction equation (Simple r =.37, p < .01). The best predictor of state anxiety was negative life events (r = .58, p < .001) with trait anxiety adding significantly to the equation (Simple r =.57, p < .001). The implications of these findings were discussed.

Vocal indicators of mood change in depression

“…As mentioned in the introduction, an increase in muscle tension (driving up F0) is one of the effects expected for states of stress, anxiety, or fear. Furthermore, relationships between anxiety and speech pauses have been generally postulated for normal subjects (see Murray, 1971), and one might expect similar findings for depression, given that anxiety is a symptom frequently associated with depression, particularly for female patients (Long, 1988;Teasdale et al, 1980). Since state anxiety seems to increase pausing (see Introduction), this would explain the general slowing of speech in the female patients.…”

“…The large majority of patients studied in this area have been females. While there have been occasional references to gender differences (Andreasen et al, 1981;Darby, Hollien, & Lueck, 1977;Hooper et al, 1978;Long, 1988), the issue has not been addressed in a systematic fashion. This might be necessary to decide between hypotheses that postulate effects less likely to be affected by gender differences (such as impairment of the extrapyramidal system) versus those more likely to be affected by gender (such as the social-emotional hypothesis).…”

Emotional intelligence and negative feelings: a gender specific moderated mediation model

“…There are some stress factors at work that cause individuals to be depressive and anxious. Rising psychological demands (Karasek and Theorell 1990), negative life events (Long 1988), poor working conditions (Plaisier et al 2007) and job insecurity ) are among the important antecedents of stress and, therefore, contribute to the development of depression and/or anxiety.…”

“…In many researches, depression was commonly found to be predicted by stress and/or anxiety (Long 1988;Rawson, Bloomer, and Kendall 1994). Although stress and anxiety were found to be positively correlated (Newburry-Birch and Kamali 2001), there are different explanations to the relationship between them.…”

Voice and Persuasion in a Banking Telemarketing Context

“…In fact, many studies in phonetics and social psychology have yielded a significant relationship between the mental representations one forms of another person and the voice of that person (Brooke & Hung Ng, 1986;Pittam & Gallois, 1987;Ekman, 1988;Ruscello, et al, 1988). According to this literature, voice provides information related to the demographic psychographic characteristics of the source such as sex, age, social status (Van Dommelen, 1987;Henton, 1989), social identity (Laver, 1968;Traunmiiller, 1984;Pittam, 1987aPittam, , 1987b, personality (Laver, 1968;Redfield & Friedrich, 1978;Long, 1988;Berger & Kellerman, 1989), emotion (Arnold, 1961;Knapp, 1963;Williams & Stevens, 1972;Andreansen, 198 1;Haberstadt, 1983), attitude (Williams & Stevens, 1972;Pittam & Gallois, 1987;Scherer, 1988), and credibility (GClinas-Chebat & Chebat, 1992. Wilson and Sherrell (1993) carried out a meta-analysis of 114 studies related to source credibility that show the effect oral media have on source credibility perception.…”