The Effects of Shoutiness
I’m not sure whether this experiment has been done before but I was watching some videos on YouTube and noticed that with some speakers/shouters my heart rate seemed to increase. I’m not sure whether this is because I agree or disagree strongly with what they are saying or whether it is some kind of natural human response to emotion or a particular pitch in voices (sort of like the urge to cry when seeing someone else cry or laugh when you hear laughter).
An interesting experiment would be to play a series of audio clips of various speakers to people whilst monitoring their heart rates. It would be handy to have them also rate the clips on how strongly they agree or disagree with the speaker.
Once the results were in I then wonder if you could use software to analyse the audio and make predictions as to how strongly a person is likely to respond on an emotional level to a particular style of speech.
Tags: audio, experiment, inspirational, reasonableness, shrillness, speeches, video
Good question (and interesting list of speakers!)
…
In my 1 Corinthians class just yesterday, we were talking about Roman culture, specifically rhetorical (communicative) methods. This stuff goes back to (and past!) Aristotle…
Logos – use of ‘word’/argument
Ethos – trustworthiness (or lack thereof!) of speaker/topic (or opponent/topic)
Pathos – appeal to emotion
‘Rhetoric’ generally has a negative connotation, but it is simply ‘persuasion’, and we all do it. All of the speakers you listed were doing their version of ‘rhetoric’. And –contrary to popular opinion– I think we all use emotion. Talking with a straight-serious-face is just one kind of communicative emotive style – the ‘serious’ one. Different styles are appropriate for different times.
It is interesting how various people respond to various rhetorical methods. I reckon volume does have some kind of direct effect on us, but also I’m convinced our attitude to the person or topic is key as well. It’s never just one thing, aye?
Quite right. Although I think that there is a difference between appealing to someone on an emotional level and appealing to someone on a rational level. If someone is trying to explain to you the benefits of various constructions of bridges you will probably be more likely to overlook facts if they shout at you enthusiastically like Bentley does. In fact, I’d imagine that someone like Bentley would probably succeed in convincing some people that a bridge made of toffee is far stronger than one made of steel but NT Wright would have a great deal of difficulty given the same task.
Shoutiness is a bit like attempting an end run around our ability to reason. But even within quiet conversation there are other tricks that can be used like big words, appeals to authority, logical fallacies, etc.
My key point here was not necessarily to distinguish whether all shouty people are lying but to look at how the pitch and volume of a person’s voice can affect our emotions and whether computer software could measure the emotional content of any given speech.
But key points aside, if we see shoutiness as a kind of tool (a lever or clutch) that is useful for disengaging people’s ability to reason then it’s probably not a bad idea to be extra wary and to throw your rationalising rockets into overdrive.
I’m sure there is something in this. But it may be quite complex. I know I find myself reacting to things aside from shouting or volume. For example, in a debate/discussion if find myself becoming annoyed when a person speaks over the other, or hogs the discussion time. I get a feeling of frustration which no doubt would be reflected in some physiological measure. Sometimes I think this is a tactic (conscious or unconscious) people resort to rather than base their arguments on evidence/reason.
I guess in the real world people often communicate to win support for an idea or action – and they consciously or unconsciously recognise that one can use tactics to achieve this end which some of us see as dishonest.
That’s at the extreme end – I recognise that emotional interaction (mirror neurons and all that) is a normal part of communication. It’s just that when this is done purposely (rather than as the normal emotion of communication) it ends up treating the listener as less than equal.
Very interesting stuff…
There are so many dimensions to communication. Facial expression, volume, wording, repitition, pace, etc., etc. All these are used at all times in public monologue or face-to-face chatting. Blogging, for example, (as well as other text-communication) requires bold, italics or other formatting for emphasis (size, font, textual effects, etc.)…
It seems that it’s important to match well the method of communication with the information/meaning being communicated. There’s a time to whisper soft words in your wife’s ear while cuddling her (how manipulative!
), a time to shrug one’s shoulders in mild-toned conversation over a cuppa, and a time to scream orders while shoving someone out of the way!
Interestingly, the tone of voice of Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr. may have been similar – but their messages were anything but!
Here we see the real issue being not methods of communication, but the veracity of ideas/values/praxis. We rejoice when the brainwashing of the Hitlers and the David Koresh’s of our world are exposed and shamed; but we (rightfully!?) ignore the ‘brainwashing’ of the King Jr’s and the Gandhi’s… 
As for computer software detecting ‘emotional content’ – I think we soon run into the problem of ‘meaning’. (I know, I know – too philosophical) We are meaning making, sharing and communicating creatures (however one may slightly or majorly rephrase that), and I think much of our ‘emotional’ reaction to speech is due to the meaning we perceive (or mis-perceive?) in it.
There was an interesting example brought up at a seminar I went to recently. The feeling we get when we realise we’re ‘talking’ to an answering machine when we thought someone was hearing us would never be felt by a computer program… Gotta run…
-d-
another thought about your proposed experiment:
you could have the same statement (with hopefully universally perceived meaning!?) communicated by various people with various styles, to a various people and measure their response – would be interesting…
I agree that the change in volume has to match the meaning of the words to illicit the emotional reaction you are talking about. But I think there’s a way around that problem. You would run the test by first flattening the dynamics a bit whilst playing back a recording, such that there are still dynamic changes in volume (so the speech doesn’t sound artificial) but less so than in the original recording. Next, play the same clip back but this time without flattening it. Measure the response of the listener in each case. For good measure, have some people hear the flattened sound clip before hearing the natural one, and have other people hear the natural one before the flattened one (to account for the effects of already having heard the message). Software can definitely be written to do this and to do it real time to boot. In fact, I wonder if there aren’t sociologists studying things like this already.