1. Effects of Speech Rate on Personality Perception
- Author
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William J. Strong, Alvin C. Rencher, Bruce L. Smith, and Bruce L. Brown
- Subjects
Male ,Linguistics and Language ,Sociology and Political Science ,Normal voice ,media_common.quotation_subject ,050105 experimental psychology ,Language and Linguistics ,Developmental psychology ,030507 speech-language pathology & audiology ,03 medical and health sciences ,Speech and Hearing ,Humans ,Speech ,Personality ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Competence (human resources) ,media_common ,Social perception ,Personality perception ,05 social sciences ,General Medicine ,Personality factors ,Social Perception ,Voice ,Normal speech ,0305 other medical science ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,Speech rate - Abstract
Using the voices of six subjects, representing various social and educational backgrounds, fifty-four synthetic voices were generated by computer. Each normal voice was both increased and decreased in rate by 121/2, 25, 371/2, and 50 per cent. Judges evaluated the fifty-four voices using a series of adjectives representing two major personality factors of " competence " and " benevolence ". Several statistical analyses were performed, and it was found that the competence factor was much more sensitive to rate manipulations than was the benevolence factor. Ratings of competence were found to increase as rate increases and decrease as rate decreases, in a linear fashion. Benevolence had an inverted U-relationship with speech rate; the highest benevolence ratings occurred with normal speech rate.
- Published
- 1975
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