I Feel Your Voice: Cultural Differences in the Multisensory Perception of Emotion

• Published in: Psychological science Vol. 21; no. 9; pp. 1259 - 1262
• Main Authors: Tanaka, Akihiro, Koizumi, Ai, Imai, Hisato, Hiramatsu, Saori, Hiramoto, Eriko, de Gelder, Beatrice
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.09.2010; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Auditory perception; Cross-Cultural Comparison; Cues; Cultural differences; Emotion; Emotional expression; Emotions; Experimentation; Face; Facial Expression; Facial expressions; Female; Happiness; Humans; Information processing; Japan; Japanese culture; Judgment; Male; Netherlands; Perception; Perceptions; Research Reports; Senses; Sensory perception; Social interaction; Social perception; Social psychology; Speech; Speech Perception; Studies; Variability; Verbal communication; Visual Perception; Voice; Young Adult; Netherlands; Japan; emotion; audiovisual speech; cultural difference; multisensory perception
• ISSN: 0956-7976; 1467-9280; 1467-9280
• DOI: 10.1177/0956797610380698

Cultural differences in emotion perception have been reported mainly for facial expressions and to a lesser extent for vocal expressions. However, the way in which the perceiver combines auditory and visual cues may itself be subject to cultural variability. Our study investigated cultural differences between Japanese and Dutch participants in the multisensory perception of emotion. A face and a voice, expressing either congruent or incongruent emotions, were presented on each trial. Participants were instructed to judge the emotion expressed in one of the two sources. The effect of to-be-ignored voice information on facial judgments was larger in Japanese than in Dutch participants, whereas the effect of to-be-ignored face information on vocal judgments was smaller in Japanese than in Dutch participants. This result indicates that Japanese people are more attuned than Dutch people to vocal processing in the multisensory perception of emotion. Our findings provide the first evidence that multisensory integration of affective information is modulated by perceivers' cultural background.