Mood Effects on the Decoding of Emotional Voices

This study examines the effect of mood induction on the decoding of emotional vocal expressions. An adequate sample of 145 students (71 females, 74 males; mean age = 23.37 ± 2.05) was recruited at the Second University of Naples (Italy). Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three (sad, fear or neutral) emotion conditions induced by viewing short movies. The results showed a significant general decrease in the decoding accuracy in the mood induction conditions when compared to the accuracy of the participants who did not received such mood induction. Post hoc analyses revealed that recognition of emotional vocal voices conveying anger was especially impaired by mood induction conditions. No findings consistent with mood congruity theory were observed. This study contributes to emotion regulation research by showing differences in emotion decoding tasks by voices due to mood induction procedures, as already observed in studies exploiting the decoding of emotional faces.

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