Assessment of incongruent emotions in face and voice

Abstract

Information derived from facial and vocal nonverbal expressions plays an important role in social communication in the real and virtual worlds. In the present study, we investigated cultural differences between Japanese and Dutch participants in the multisensory perception of emotion. We used a face and voice that expressed incongruent emotions as stimuli and conducted two experiments. We presented either the face or voice in Experiment 1, and both the face and voice in Experiment 2. We found that both visual and auditory information were important for Japanese participants judging in-group stimuli, while visual information was more important for other combinations of participants and stimuli. Additionally, we showed that the in-group advantage provided by auditory information was higher in Japanese than Dutch participants. Our findings indicate that audio-visual integration of affective information is modulated by the perceiver's cultural backgroun