Mahrholz, G. , Belin, P. and McAleer, P. (2018) Judgements of a speaker’s personality are correlated across differing content and stimulus type. PLoS ONE, 13(10), e0204991. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204991) (PMID:23894425) (PMCID:PMC3722173)
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Abstract
It has previously been shown that first impressions of a speaker’s personality, whether accurate or not, can be judged from short utterances of vowels and greetings, as well as from prolonged sentences and readings of complex paragraphs. From these studies, it is established that listeners’ judgements are highly consistent with one another, suggesting that different people judge personality traits in a similar fashion, with three key personality traits being related to measures of valence (associated with trustworthiness), dominance, and attractiveness. Yet, particularly in voice perception, limited research has established the reliability of such personality judgements across stimulus types of varying lengths. Here we investigate whether first impressions of trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness of novel speakers are related when a judgement is made on hearing both one word and one sentence from the same speaker. Secondly, we test whether what is said, thus adjusting content, influences the stability of personality ratings. 60 Scottish voices (30 females) were recorded reading two texts: one of ambiguous content and one with socially-relevant content. One word (~500 ms) and one sentence (~3000 ms) were extracted from each recording for each speaker. 181 participants (138 females) rated either male or female voices across both content conditions (ambiguous, socially-relevant) and both stimulus types (word, sentence) for one of the three personality traits (trustworthiness, dominance, attractiveness). Pearson correlations showed personality ratings between words and sentences were strongly correlated, with no significant influence of content. In short, when establishing an impression of a novel speaker, judgments of three key personality traits are highly related whether you hear one word or one sentence, irrespective of what they are saying. This finding is consistent with initial personality judgments serving as elucidators of approach or avoidance behaviour, without modulation by time or content. All data and sounds are available on OSF (osf.io/s3cxy).
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Gaby Mahrholz is a recipient of a 1+3 Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) award from the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (SGSSS). |
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Mahrholz, Dr Gaby and McAleer, Dr Phil and Belin, Professor Pascal |
| Creator Roles: | Mahrholz, G.Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing Belin, P.Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review and editing McAleer, P.Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – review and editing |
| Authors: | Mahrholz, G., Belin, P., and McAleer, P. |
| College/School: | College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology |
| Journal Name: | PLoS ONE |
| Publisher: | Public Library of Science |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1932-6203 |
| Copyright Holders: | Copyright © 2018 Mahrholz et al. |
| First Published: | First published in PLoS ONE 13(10):e0204991 |
| Publisher Policy: | Reproduced under a Creative Commons License |
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