Abstract
The extraordinary impact of voice quality on the message transferred is a phenomenon of everyday life. Sayings like “It is the tone that makes the music,” or idioms like “To find the right tone” or “To set the tone” point out that messages with the same content have a different influence on an audience if they are uttered in a different way. This phenomenon has already been underlined in early descriptions of rhetorical hints. Authors like Cicero (1976) or Quintillian (1972, 1975) have supplied detailed descriptions on the impact of different ways of speaking. The effect of voice quality on perception of a message transferred and on the willingness to perform this message has also been taken up in many areas of psychological research. Since Trager’s (1958) first attempts to systematize different features of voice quality, numerous investigations, especially in the area of social psychology, have been undertaken to unravel the function of voice quality on processes of person perception and social influence. Thus, vocal parameters have been regarded as decisive for processes of attitude change, especially inducing conformity (Scherer, 1972), mediating experimenter effects (Orne, 1962) and have thus been looked upon as a decisive determinant for bringing about complex phenomena such as self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal, 1966).
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Gehm, T., Appel, J., Apsel, D. (1989). Slight Manipulations with Great Effects: On the Suggestive Impact of Vocal Parameter Change. In: Gheorghiu, V.A., Netter, P., Eysenck, H.J., Rosenthal, R. (eds) Suggestion and Suggestibility. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73875-3_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-73875-3_28
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