Cross-Cultural Emotion Recognition and In-Group Advantage in Vocal Expression: A Meta-Analysis. (January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Laukka, Petri; Elfenbein, Hillary Anger
• Other Names: Sauter Disa A. guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Emotion review. Volume 13:Number 1(2021)
• Page Start: 3
• Page End: 11
• Publication Date: 2021-01
• Subjects: culture -- dialect theory -- emotion -- in-group advantage -- meta-analysis -- speech -- universality -- voice; Emotions -- Periodicals; Emotions -- Research -- Periodicals; 152.4
• DOI: 10.1177/1754073919897295
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1754-0739

Abstract

Most research on cross-cultural emotion recognition has focused on facial expressions. To integrate the body of evidence on vocal expression, we present a meta-analysis of 37 cross-cultural studies of emotion recognition from speech prosody and nonlinguistic vocalizations, including expressers from 26 cultural groups and perceivers from 44 different cultures. Results showed that a wide variety of positive and negative emotions could be recognized with above-chance accuracy in cross-cultural conditions. However, there was also evidence for in-group advantage with higher accuracy in within- versus cross-cultural conditions. The distance between expresser and perceiver culture, measured via Hofstede's cultural dimensions, was negatively correlated with recognition accuracy and positively correlated with in-group advantage. Results are discussed in relation to the dialect theory of emotion.