Learning Interpersonal Stance in Voice

Abstract

This work presents a simulation-based training application to enhance people’s ability to express interpersonal stance using their voice. The results show that the application helps people to learn the principles of Leary’s interpersonal stance theory, and distinguish between the eight basic stances. Nevertheless, it remains difficult for people to express them without mixing the categories. Although the increase was small, the training application improved the users performance in expressing interpersonal stance in their voices after three days of training. The results also indicate that one of the main barriers of the learning process is that people need time to incorporate or refine interpersonal stances.