Spontaneous vocal expressions from everyday life convey discrete emotions to listeners

Emotional expression is crucial for social interaction. Yet researchers disagree about whether nonverbal expressions truly reflect felt emotions and whether they convey discrete emotions to perceivers in everyday life. In the present study, 384 clips of vocal expression recorded in a field setting were rated by the speakers themselves and by naïve listeners with regard to their emotional contents. Results suggested that most expressions in everyday life are reflective of felt emotions in speakers. Seventy-three percent of the voice clips involved moderate to high emotion intensity. Speaker-listener agreement concerning expressed emotions was 5 times higher than would be expected from chance alone, and agreement was significantly higher for voice clips with high emotion intensity than for clips with low intensity. Acoustic analysis of the clips revealed emotion-specific patterns of voice cues. "Mixed emotions" occurred in 41% of the clips. Such expressions were typically interpreted by listeners as conveying one or the other of the two felt emotions. Mixed emotions were rarely recognized as such. The results are discussed regarding their implications for the domain of emotional expression in general, and vocal expression in particular. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).