You ‘have’ to hear this: Using tone of voice to motivate others.

Abstract

The present studies explored the role of prosody in motivating others, and applied selfdetermination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) to do so. Initial studies describe patterns of prosody that discriminate motivational speech. Autonomy support was expressed with lower intensity, slower speech rate and less voice energy in both motivationally laden and neutral (but motivationally primed) sentences. In a follow-up study, participants were able to recognize motivational prosody in semantically neutral sentences, suggesting prosody alone may carry motivational content. Findings from subsequent studies also showed that an autonomy-supportive as compared to a controlling tone facilitated positive personal (perceived choice and lower perceived pressure, well-being) and interpersonal (closeness to others and prosocial behaviors) outcomes commonly linked to this type of motivation. Results inform both the social psychology (in particular motivation) and psycholinguistic (in particular prosody) literatures and offer a first description of how motivational tone alone can shape listeners' experiences.

Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents’ reactions to mothers.

“…As described above, investigators have typically focused on identifying the nature and outcomes of the words speakers select to use when communicating motivation, but new evidence points to the importance of the tone of voice used through which a motivating directive is conveyed. Informed by work on affective prosody (see e.g., Paulmann, 2016, or Mitchell & Ross, 2013, recent work on motivational prosody (Weinstein et al, 2018) has shown that the two motivational qualities of autonomy support and control differ systematically in terms of their acoustic characteristics. Specifically, autonomy-supportive phrasing uses a lower volume and less vocal energy in high frequency bands when compared to intoning controlling phrasing (Weinstein et al, 2018).…”

Now listen to this! Evidence from a cross-spliced experimental design contrasting pressuring and supportive communications

“…Specifically, this procedure allows us to determine if deviance detection for the two motivation qualities differs and which motivation type listeners may attend to preferentially. The only study evaluating the time course of these motivational communications (Zougkou et al, 2018) identified that listening to controlling tones led to more enhanced ERP components (P2, LPP) than either supportive or motivationally neutral tones.…”

“…", which, depending on the tone of voice used by the speaker, could be interpreted in several ways. Past research shows that when spoken with a relatively low pitched, but loud tone of voice, as well as fast speech rate and harsh sounding voice quality, the listener will be driven to action because they are attempting to conform to imposed expectations (Weinstein, Zougkou, & Paulmann, 2018). In contrast, listening to the same message spoken in a higher pitched, quieter tone of voice and a slower speech rate may lead the listener to feel that the action (in this example, to complete a writing task) may be linked to their own interests, beliefs or values (e.g., that writing is a good idea because the author would like to communicate her or his useful findings).…”

“…studying for fun vs. for a grade) and it remains to be seen if comparable results are elicited when motivations are communicated through tone of voice. While research such as this has extensively explored which words may be used to communicate motivations (Hodgins, Brown, & Carver, 2007;Levesque & Pelletier, 2003;Radel, Sarrazin, & Pelletier, 2009;Ryan, 2012;Weinstein & Hodgins, 2009), relatively little is known about how the prosody, or tone of voice, used to deliver motivational messages (Weinstein, Zougkou & Paulmann, 2014;Weinstein et al, 2018, Zougkou, Weinstein, Paulmann, 2017, elicits differential responses from listeners.…”

“…Midline electrode-sites (Fz, Cz, CPz, Pz) were analyzed separately.Analyses for the prosody condition. For ERP analysis on non-violated materials, time windows of interest for mean amplitude measures were based on visual inspection and have also been the focus in past research on motivational prosody(Zougkou et al, 2018). Two time-windows were of interest: 170 -230 ms (P2) and 350 -600 ms (late potential) following sentence onset.…”