Frontiers Friday #97. Emotions & Voice (Part III) ⭕
FF97 Emotions and Voice (Part III)
Have you wondered how you sound to others?
If you have heard your own voice played back to you before, what was your reaction?
The first time I heard my own voice was when I put two telephones onto each side as I spoke. I was a kid. I laughed uncontrollably at how much I sounded like a Tiny Toon.
Flash forward to the Zoom age. Most of us now know how we look on the screen, but have no idea how we sound to others. (By the way, I recommend turning off the self-view to put your spotlight of attention on others and not self-induce social anxiety. After-all, part of social anxiety is over-worrying about how others see you.)
I am fascinated by the voice. It is one of the most emotive instruments available to us. It conveys so much, as you will see in the first recommendation, maybe even more than body language. I don't think it's a coincidence we say things like "you've got to find your own voice."
Our voice is not only like a fingerprint, but it is a drawbridge between the inner- and outer-life. When we speak, we "open up" not just through the content of what we say, but also the vicissitude of emotions conveyed in the tone, amplitude, pressure and speed (CTAPS).
In case you missed the two previous missives on Emotions,
Here's this week's Frontiers Friday Five Recommendations:
❓Question: Are You More Emotionally Accurate With Voice + Facial Cues, or with Voice Only?
We prefer for both video and audio inputs for communication. However, Michael Kraus and colleagues found that when we have only voice input–that is minus non-verbal input–our emotional accuracy higher!Based on a series of 5 experiments that were conducted with 1700+ folks, contrary to Paul Ekman’s work on the reliance of facial expressions, Kraus noted,
_...Voice-only communication elicits higher rates of empathic accuracy relative to vision-only...
The current research suggests that relying on a combination of vocal and facial cues, or solely facial cues, may not be the best strategy for accurate emotion recognition—particularly because facial expressions can sometimes be inconsistent with internal states or used to actively dissemble.I don't know about you, but this blows my mind. So what should we do? Insist that we speak on the phone only? Not quite. Maybe we can learn what musicians do on stage when they are deep in the flow of things: They close their eyes.
I notice that sometimes some people close their eyes when they are intently listening to the other person speaking. Especially in a significant moment of the conversation, constraining the visual input for a blip moment might actually help us to attune better. (For more details on this, see the next Tip in #2).
Notes:
1. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you close your eyes in the entire session.
2. I first mentioned this study in Looking Back at 2020
👓 Read: Measures of Client and Therapist Vocal Quality
It's fair to say that a lot of emotional signal is conveyed in our voice. Psychotherapy researchers seemed to be clued in on this early on in the 80’s when they attempted to codify vocal quality.
Take for example, in Greenberg and Pinsof’s 1986 seminal edited book, The Therapeutic Process, Laura Rice and Gillian Kerr addressed the topic of measuring client and therapist vocal quality as indicators of the depth of processing within therapeutic conversations.
Table 3.1 from Chapter 3 of edited book The Therapeutic Process “Measures of Client and Therapist Vocal Quality by Rice and Kerr, 1986.
If you conduct therapy or trainings online, the implication is clear. Take care of the quality of your microphone input. Invest in a USB microphone. While a microphone headset does a good enough job, the microphone quality is highly compressed, which means that it would sound thinner than a proper condenser microphone.
Besides having a good mic, make sure that your speakers are clear. Don’t rely on the tiny sound coming out of your mobile device or laptop speakers. Get a headset or external speakers.
🎁 Here's a Tip:
Personally, I've found the theoretical ideas on Vocal Quality proposed by Rice and Keer useful, but hard to operationalise using their four vocal patterns.
Instead, for simplicity, I pay attention to the content, tone, amplitude, pressure and speed (CTAPS).Content: Listen carefully to what is being said, if it is congruent with the emotional charge experienced in the room.
Tone: As far as I can tell, the tone is experienced through the cadence, prosody/expressiveness and intonation of speech. Put simply, imagine a horizontal wave form. Is the person speaking in a flat-lined monotonic manner, or an animated speech with melodic ups and downs.
Clinical Example: Recently, a client was reflecting on the progress he has made in his life after a tumultuous period. He pictured his 8-year-old self in front of him. He began to feel a warmth of joy in returning to his true self, allowing himself to be playful and to experience life once again. "It's just so liberating," he said.
As we stayed there in this exercise, I noticed a slight change in the tonal quality of his voice. His eyes deepened. I asked, "What's happening right now?" He said, "Good. I feel good. "
"That's good... what else is happening inside?"
He said, "I can't help but feel sad for the lost time in my life... that whole period of my life..."
All feelings are welcomed. We continued to process the grief that emerged. After all, change is loss.Amplitude: This simply means volume. How loudly or softly is the person speaking? Is the person projecting her voice, or is the person swallowing their words as it leaves their mouth?
Pressure: In our clinical language, we call this "pressure of speech". How much force is in the speech?
Clinical Example: I had a client from long ago. She had a powerful and commanding way of speaking. In our first meeting, she voiced the content of her concerns with a crisp, clear projected delivery. but I couldn't help notice the degree of pressure in her voice. I could almost feel the vibrations of the not-so-solids walls as she spoke. I interrupted her and told her what was at the back of my mind about this "pressure" in her voice. She broke down. She said that she feels so much pressure inside. Time's running out. Should I have kids? What if I'm not fit to be a mother? What if I chose not to have kids? My career... What if I want to carry on my artistic pursuits, but I'm not young anymore...*
🎥 Watch: Why You Don't Like the Sound of Your Own Voice
This type of TED talk fascinates me.
Some therapists have a hard time listening back to the sound of their own voice, which in turn, deters them from recording their sessions, beyond the requirements of doing so in grad school.
Here's what Rébecca Kleinberger says about our voice:
"If I take a little snippet of your voice and I analyze it, I can know whether you're talking to your mother, to your brother, your friend or your boss."
"Neurologists found out recently that when you open your mouth to create a sound, your own auditory cortex shuts down."
This is why you might think you do hear your voice when you speak your brain actually never listens to the sound of your voice.
🎥 Watch (and Laugh): Trevor Noah Afraid of the Dark
My wife and I just watched this last night on Netflix. We laughed our heads off. His impressions of accents is so spot-on. His imaginary dialogue with Nelson Mandela teaching Barack Obama how to use his voice was sooo good – as well as why speaking with a Russian accent should be taught to girls as a defence strategy.
Here's a short clip in YT.
⏸ Words Worth Contemplating:
"Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself.” ~ Miles Davis
Reflection:
1. Befriend the sound of your voice. This is you. 2. Listen to the music of the other person's voice. This is the other.
BIG HUGS TO NEW PEOPLE WHO ARE AT THEIR FRONTIER!
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