Cultural differences in vocal emotion recognition: a behavioural and skin conductance study in Portugal and Guinea-Bissau

• Autor(a) principal: Cosme, Gonçalo
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Tavares, Vânia, Nobre, Guilherme, Lima, César, Sá, Rui, Rosa, Pedro, Prata, Diana
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/28268
• topic: Cultural differences; Portugal; Guinea‑Bissau

Cross-cultural studies of emotion recognition in nonverbal vocalizations not only support the universality hypothesis for its innate features, but also an in-group advantage for culture-dependent features. Nevertheless, in such studies, diferences in socio-economic-educational status have not always been accounted for, with idiomatic translation of emotional concepts being a limitation, and the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms still un-researched. We set out to investigate whether native residents from Guinea-Bissau (West African culture) and Portugal (Western European culture)—matched for socio-economic-educational status, sex and language—varied in behavioural and autonomic system response during emotion recognition of nonverbal vocalizations from Portuguese individuals. Overall, Guinea–Bissauans (as out-group) responded signifcantly less accurately (corrected p<.05), slower, and showed a trend for higher concomitant skin conductance, compared to Portuguese (as in-group)—fndings which may indicate a higher cognitive efort stemming from higher difculty in discerning emotions from another culture. Specifcally, accuracy diferences were particularly found for pleasure, amusement, and anger, rather than for sadness, relief or fear. Nevertheless, both cultures recognized all emotions above-chance level. The perceived authenticity, measured for the frst time in nonverbal cross-cultural research, in the same vocalizations, retrieved no diference between cultures in accuracy, but still a slower response from the out-group. Lastly, we provide—to our knowledge—a frst account of how skin conductance response varies between nonverbally vocalized emotions, with signifcant diferences (p<.05). In sum, we provide behavioural and psychophysiological data, demographically and language-matched, that supports cultural and emotion efects on vocal emotion recognition and perceived authenticity, as well as the universality hypothesis.