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Human listeners can accurately judge strength and height relative to self from aggressive roars and speech

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posted on 2023-06-09, 13:22 authored by Jordan Raine, Katarzyna Pisanski, Anna Oleszkiewicz, Julia SimnerJulia Simner, David Reby
While animal vocalisations and human speech are known to communicate physical formidability, no previous study has examined whether human listeners can assess the strength or body size of vocalisers relative to their own, either from speech or from nonverbal vocalisations. Here, although men tended to underestimate women’s formidability, and women to overestimate men’s, listeners judged relative strength and height from aggressive roars and aggressive speech accurately. For example, when judging roars, male listeners accurately identified vocalisers who were substantially stronger than themselves in 88% of trials, and never as weaker. For male vocalisers only, roars functioned to exaggerate the expression of threat compared to aggressive speech, as men were rated as relatively stronger when producing roars. These results indicate that, like other mammals, the acoustic structure of human aggressive vocal signals (and in particular nonverbal roars) may have been selected to communicate functional information relevant to listeners’ survival.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

iScience

ISSN

2589-0042

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

4

Page range

273-280

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2018-05-18

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2018-09-26

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-05-17

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