Does the Voice Reveal More Emotion than the Face? a Study with Animated Agents

In general, people tend to identify the emotions of others from their facial expressions, however recent findings suggest that we may be more accurate when we hear someone's voice than when we look only at their facial expression. The study reported in the paper examined whether these findings hold true for animated agents. A total of 37 subjects participated in the study: 19 males, 14 females, and 4 of non-specified gender. Subjects were asked to view 18 video stimuli; 9 clips featured a male agent and 9 clips a female agent. Each agent showed 3 different facial expressions (happy, angry, neutral), each one paired with 3 different voice lines spoken in three different tones (happy, angry, neutral). Hence, in some clips the agent's tone of voice and facial expression were congruent, while in some videos they were not. Subjects answered questions regarding the emotion they believed the agent was feeling and rated the emotion intensity, typicality, and sincerity. Findings showed that emotion recognition rate and ratings of emotion intensity, typicality and sincerity were highest when the agent's face and voice were congruent. However, when the channels were incongruent, subjects identified the emotion more accurately from the agent's facial expression than the tone of voice.