Vocal affect expression as an indicator of affective response

This research is designed to validate the measurement of vocal affect expression as an accurate indicator of affective responses. Subjects who support legalized abortion read aloud either proattitudinal or counterattitudinal statements. Their recorded voices were digitized, standardized against their own baseline vocal parameters, and analyzed for differences in mean and range of fundamental frequency between the pro-attitudinal and counterattitudinal conditions. Subjects with strong initial attitudes exhibited the expected pattern of negative affect while reading counterattitudinal material. However, subjects with initial attitudes moderate in strength exhibited an unexpected pattern of negative affect when reading pro-attitudinal information. Written measures of the affective and evaluative components of attitudes toward: abortion and; a measure of mood were employed to validate the voice measure.

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