Research

I study the human voice – the social information it conveys, and its unique influence on the people around us. In particular, my research focuses on how our voices communicate emotion in daily social interactions, and how contextual information shapes the perception of emotional vocalizations in real life.

To date, the prevalent approach in emotion research relies on simulated and stereotypical vocalization of actors, which fails to represent the full diversity of emotional displays in daily life. In my research, I take a radically different approach by examining the diagnostic nature of naturalistic vocal expressions and their contextualized perception during real-life emotional situations.

My studies show that vocal reactions to highly intense positive and negative real-life events are easily confused, and their ambiguity increases with higher intensity. For example, I show that real-life lottery winners sound more negative as they win higher sums of money in the lottery, and that vocal reactions to joyful reunions of family members with a homecoming soldier sound similar to terrifying encounters with a home invader. I also show that contextual information (e.g., visual cues) plays a fundamental role in disambiguating real-life vocal expressions, shifting their perceived valence categorically, from positive to negative and vice versa.

Emotion communication is essentially about facilitating adaptive actions in social environments. To this end, my latest research focuses on the interpersonal effects of emotional vocalizations. Specifically, I study the role of human laughter and crying vocalizations in eliciting empathy and prosocial behavior in naturalistic settings.

My long-term goal is to develop a new and comprehensive framework for understanding the mechanisms and social impact of human vocal communication, focusing on multimodal cue integration as a central building block in forming social perceptions.