http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/commstudies_oapdeposits/rss Recent eScholarship items from Department of Communication Open Access Policy Deposits Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:17:43 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7gt4w9k8 Adjectives are essential in how people describe, evaluate, and reason about others. They differ along meaningful semantic dimensions such as desirability (e.g., “friendly” is more positive than “rude”) and breadth (e.g., “punctual” is narrower than “reliable”). Adjectival breadth has received limited empirical attention, partly because existing resources are sparse and outdated. We introduce a new database with subjective ratings from approximately 1,500 Americans for 1,214 adjectives on both breadth and desirability. Unlike existing resources, this updated database is more comprehensive and diverse, allowing for detailed analysis of adjectival use in academic and applied contexts. We validate this database with a large-scale analysis of online product reviews, showing how variation in adjective breadth is a common feature of natural language use. This database should prove valuable for research on semantic representation, social inference, and evaluative communication across... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7gt4w9k8 Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lin, Lin L Dale, Rick Stroessner, Steven J https://escholarship.org/uc/item/986575pv Leveraging AI to advance psychological research for climate policy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/986575pv Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Yu, Dhara Thompson, Bill D Dubey, Rachit https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42n2p8fp Production and perception of volitional laughter across social contexts https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42n2p8fp Wed, 7 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Daunay, Virgile Reby, David Pisanski, Kasia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8xk2s0qj Music traditions worldwide are subject to remarkable diversity but the origins of this variation are not well understood. Musical behaviour is the product of a multicomponent collection of abilities, some possibly evolved for music but most derived from traits serving nonmusical functions. Cultural evolution has stitched together these systems, generating variable normative practices across cultures and musical genres. Here, we describe the cultural evolution of musical distortion, a noisy manipulation of instrumental and vocal timbre that emulates nonlinear phenomena (NLP) present in the vocal signals of many animals. We suggest that listeners' sensitivity to NLP has facilitated technological developments for altering musical instruments and singing with distortion, which continues to evolve culturally via the need for groups to both coordinate internally and differentiate themselves from other groups. To support this idea, we present an agent-based model of norm evolution illustrating... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8xk2s0qj Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Smaldino, Paul E https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7133-5620 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9tn6s0g6 People form social evaluations of others following brief exposure to their voices, and these impressions are calibrated based on recent perceptual experience. Participants adapted to voices with fundamental frequency (<i>f</i> _o; the acoustic correlate of perceptual pitch) manipulated to be gender-typical (i.e. masculine men and feminine women) or gender-atypical (i.e. feminine men and masculine women) before evaluating unaltered test voices within the same sex. Adaptation resulted in contrastive aftereffects. Listening to gender-atypical voices caused female voices to sound more feminine and attractive (Study 1) and male voices to sound more masculine and attractive (Study 2). Studies 3a and 3b tested whether adaptation occurred on a conceptual or perceptual level, respectively. In Study 3a, perceivers adapted to gender-typical or gender-atypical voices for both men and women (i.e. adaptors pitch manipulated in opposite directions for men and women) before evaluating... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9tn6s0g6 Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Neuenswander, Kelsey L Gillespie, Grace SR Lick, David J Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Johnson, Kerri L https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91v288ms People often interact with groups (i.e., ensembles) during social interactions. Given that group-level information is important in navigating social environments, we expect perceptual sensitivity to aspects of groups that are relevant for personal threat as well as social belonging. Most ensemble perception research has focused on visual ensembles, with little research looking at auditory or vocal ensembles. Across four studies, we present evidence that (i) perceivers accurately extract the sex composition of a group from voices alone, (ii) judgments of threat increase concomitantly with the number of men, and (iii) listeners’ sense of belonging depends on the number of same-sex others in the group. This work advances our understanding of social cognition, interpersonal communication, and ensemble coding to include auditory information, and reveals people’s ability to extract relevant social information from brief exposures to vocalizing groups. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/91v288ms Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Neuenswander, Kelsey L Goodale, Brianna M Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Johnson, Kerri L https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6ff3k4r0 Theories of vocal signalling in humans typically only consider communication within the interactive group and ignore intergroup dynamics. Recent work has found that colaughter generated between pairs of people in conversation can afford accurate judgements of affiliation across widely disparate cultures, and the acoustic features that listeners use to make these judgements are linked to speaker arousal. But to what extent does colaughter inform third party listeners beyond other dynamic information between interlocutors such as overlapping talk? We presented listeners with short segments (1-3 s) of colaughter and simultaneous speech (i.e. cospeech) taken from natural conversations between established friends and newly acquainted strangers. Participants judged whether the pairs of interactants in the segments were friends or strangers. Colaughter afforded more accurate judgements of affiliation than did cospeech, despite cospeech being over twice in duration relative to colaughter... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6ff3k4r0 Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Wang, Christine S Fusaroli, Riccardo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w60d53f Like most human non-verbal vocalizations, laughter is produced by speakers of all languages, across all known societies. But despite this obvious fact (or perhaps because of it), there is little comparative research examining the structural and functional similarity of laughter across speakers from different cultures. Here, we describe existing research examining (i) the perception of laughter across disparate cultures, (ii) conversation analysis examining how laughter manifests itself during discourse across different languages, and (iii) computational methods developed for automatically detecting laughter in spoken language databases. Together, these three areas of investigation provide clues regarding universals and cultural variations in laughter production and perception, and offer methodological tools that can be useful for future large-scale cross-cultural studies. We conclude by providing suggestions for areas of research and predictions of what we should expect to discover.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w60d53f Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Bainbridge, Constance M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2cb2p5bn The study of human vocal communication has been conducted primarily in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) societies. Recently, cross-cultural investigations in several domains of voice research have been expanding into more diverse populations. Theoretically, it is important to understand how universals and cultural variations interact in vocal production and perception, but cross-cultural voice research presents many methodological challenges. Experimental methods typically used in WEIRD societies are often not possible to implement in many populations such as rural, small-scale societies. Moreover, theoretical and methodological issues are often unnecessarily intertwined. Here, I focus on three areas of cross-cultural voice modulation research: (i) vocal signalling of formidability and dominance, (ii) vocal emotions, and (iii) production and perception of infant-directed speech. Research in these specific areas illustrates challenges that apply more... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2cb2p5bn Thu, 18 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s81m33n When speaking to infants, adults often produce speech that differs systematically from that directed to other adults. To quantify the acoustic properties of this speech style across a wide variety of languages and cultures, we extracted results from empirical studies on the acoustic features of infant-directed speech. We analysed data from 88 unique studies (734 effect sizes) on the following five acoustic parameters that have been systematically examined in the literature: fundamental frequency (f0), f0 variability, vowel space area, articulation rate and vowel duration. Moderator analyses were conducted in hierarchical Bayesian robust regression models to examine how these features change with infant age and differ across languages, experimental tasks and recording environments. The moderator analyses indicated that f0, articulation rate and vowel duration became more similar to adult-directed speech over time, whereas f0 variability and vowel space area exhibited stability... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s81m33n Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Cox, Christopher Bergmann, Christina Fowler, Emma Keren-Portnoy, Tamar Roepstorff, Andreas Bryant, Greg https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Fusaroli, Riccardo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34v6x3xp Across many species, a major function of vocal communication is to convey formidability, with low voice frequencies traditionally considered the main vehicle for projecting large size and aggression. Vocal loudness is often ignored, yet it might explain some puzzling exceptions to this frequency code. Here we demonstrate, through acoustic analyses of over 3,000 human vocalizations and four perceptual experiments, that vocalizers produce low frequencies when attempting to sound large, but loudness is prioritized for displays of strength and aggression. Our results show that, although being loud is effective for signaling strength and aggression, it poses a physiological trade-off with low frequencies because a loud voice is achieved by elevating pitch and opening the mouth wide into a-like vowels. This may explain why aggressive vocalizations are often high-pitched and why open vowels are considered "large" in sound symbolism despite their high first formant. Callers often compensate... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34v6x3xp Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Anikin, Andrey Valente, Daria Pisanski, Katarzyna Cornec, Clement Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Reby, David https://escholarship.org/uc/item/23c05169 We discuss approaches to the study of the evolution of music (sect. R1); challenges to each of the two theories of the origins of music presented in the companion target articles (sect. R2); future directions for testing them (sect. R3); and priorities for better understanding the nature of music (sect. R4). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/23c05169 Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Mehr, Samuel A Krasnow, Max M Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Hagen, Edward H https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4m99c9rb This paper develops a model of voter turnout that embeds Riker and Ordeshook's (1968 <i>Am. Pol. Sci. Rev.</i> <b>62</b>, 25-42 (doi:10.2307/1953324)) calculus of voting into the context of a social network. In the model, an individual's expressive benefits to voting depend on the behaviour of their social contacts. We show that there may be multiple equilibria and analyse how these equilibria depend on the structure of the network. We discuss six empirical implications of the model for turnout, some of which suggest novel answers to longstanding puzzles in the turnout literature, such as: why are higher income individuals more likely to vote even in cases when registration costs are low? Why is turnout so difficult to predict? Why does lowering registration costs disproportionately increase turnout among high-income voters? And why do we observe inertia in turnout across elections? https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4m99c9rb Tue, 7 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Kernell, Georgia Lamberson, PJ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4176-9428 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7w78v26b Laughter is a nonverbal vocal expression that often communicates positive affect and cooperative intent in humans. Temporally coincident laughter occurring within groups is a potentially rich cue of affiliation to overhearers. We examined listeners' judgments of affiliation based on brief, decontextualized instances of colaughter between either established friends or recently acquainted strangers. In a sample of 966 participants from 24 societies, people reliably distinguished friends from strangers with an accuracy of 53-67%. Acoustic analyses of the individual laughter segments revealed that, across cultures, listeners' judgments were consistently predicted by voicing dynamics, suggesting perceptual sensitivity to emotionally triggered spontaneous production. Colaughter affords rapid and accurate appraisals of affiliation that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and may constitute a universal means of signaling cooperative relationships. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7w78v26b Sat, 9 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Fessler, Daniel MT https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7795-7500 Fusaroli, Riccardo Clint, Edward Aarøe, Lene Apicella, Coren L Petersen, Michael Bang Bickham, Shaneikiah T Bolyanatz, Alexander Chavez, Brenda De Smet, Delphine Díaz, Cinthya Fančovičová, Jana Fux, Michal Giraldo-Perez, Paulina Hu, Anning Kamble, Shanmukh V Kameda, Tatsuya Li, Norman P Luberti, Francesca R Prokop, Pavol Quintelier, Katinka Scelza, Brooke A Shin, Hyun Jung Soler, Montserrat Stieger, Stefan Toyokawa, Wataru van den Hende, Ellis A Viciana-Asensio, Hugo Yildizhan, Saliha Elif Yong, Jose C Yuditha, Tessa Zhou, Yi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zd0w6jd Wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19, but compliance with mask mandates varies across individuals, time, and space. Accurate and continuous measures of mask wearing, as well as other health-related behaviors, are important for public health policies. This article presents a novel approach to estimate mask wearing using geotagged Twitter image data from March through September, 2020 in the United States. We validate our measure using public opinion survey data and extend the analysis to investigate county-level differences in mask wearing. We find a strong association between mask mandates and mask wearing—an average increase of 20%. Moreover, this association is greatest in Republican-leaning counties. The findings have important implications for understanding how governmental policies shape and monitor citizen responses to public health crises. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zd0w6jd Sat, 8 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Lin, Xiaofeng Kernell, Georgia Groeling, Tim Joo, Jungseock Luo, Jun Steinert-Threlkeld, Zachary C https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5122-9660 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pw3t2z3 Music comprises a diverse category of cognitive phenomena that likely represent both the effects of psychological adaptations that are specific to music (e.g., rhythmic entrainment) and the effects of adaptations for non-musical functions (e.g., auditory scene analysis). How did music evolve? Here, we show that prevailing views on the evolution of music - that music is a byproduct of other evolved faculties, evolved for social bonding, or evolved to signal mate quality - are incomplete or wrong. We argue instead that music evolved as a credible signal in at least two contexts: coalitional interactions and infant care. Specifically, we propose that (1) the production and reception of coordinated, entrained rhythmic displays is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling coalition strength, size, and coordination ability; and (2) the production and reception of infant-directed song is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling parental attention to secondarily altricial infants.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pw3t2z3 Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Mehr, Samuel A Krasnow, Max M Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Hagen, Edward H https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6wv689dd Riffing Off Intellectual Property in Contempoarry Dance https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6wv689dd Tue, 7 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Biagioli-Ravetto, Mario Ravetto-Biagioli, Kriss https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6829b0h1 When interacting with infants, humans often alter their speech and song in ways thought to support communication. Theories of human child-rearing, informed by data on vocal signalling across species, predict that such alterations should appear globally. Here, we show acoustic differences between infant-directed and adult-directed vocalizations across cultures. We collected 1,615 recordings of infant- and adult-directed speech and song produced by 410 people in 21 urban, rural and small-scale societies. Infant-directedness was reliably classified from acoustic features only, with acoustic profiles of infant-directedness differing across language and music but in consistent fashions. We then studied listener sensitivity to these acoustic features. We played the recordings to 51,065 people from 187 countries, recruited via an English-language website, who guessed whether each vocalization was infant-directed. Their intuitions were more accurate than chance, predictable in part by... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6829b0h1 Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Hilton, Courtney B Moser, Cody J Bertolo, Mila Lee-Rubin, Harry Amir, Dorsa Bainbridge, Constance M Simson, Jan Knox, Dean Glowacki, Luke Alemu, Elias Galbarczyk, Andrzej Jasienska, Grazyna Ross, Cody T Neff, Mary Beth Martin, Alia Cirelli, Laura K Trehub, Sandra E Song, Jinqi Kim, Minju https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5878-7350 Schachner, Adena https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6886-7098 Vardy, Tom A Atkinson, Quentin D Salenius, Amanda Andelin, Jannik Antfolk, Jan Madhivanan, Purnima Siddaiah, Anand Placek, Caitlyn D Salali, Gul Deniz Keestra, Sarai Singh, Manvir Collins, Scott A Patton, John Q Scaff, Camila Stieglitz, Jonathan Cutipa, Silvia Ccari Moya, Cristina https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7100-9115 Sagar, Rohan R Anyawire, Mariamu Mabulla, Audax Wood, Brian M https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8187-9429 Krasnow, Max M Mehr, Samuel A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x25h067 Mouse cursor tracking has become a prominent method for characterizing cognitive processes, used in a wide variety of domains of psychological science. Researchers have demonstrated considerable ingenuity in the application of the approach, but the methodology has not undergone systematic analysis to facilitate the development of best practices. Furthermore, recent research has demonstrated effects of experimental design features on a number of mousetracking outcomes. We conducted a systematic review of the mouse-tracking literature to survey the reporting and spread of mouse variables (Cursor speed, Sampling rate, Training), physical characteristics of the experiments (Stimulus position, Response box position) and response requirements (Start procedure, Response procedure, Response deadline). This survey reveals that there is room for improvement in reporting practices, especially of subtler design features that researchers may have assumed would not impact research results (e.g.,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2x25h067 Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Schoemann, Martin O’Hora, Denis Dale, Rick Scherbaum, Stefan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/693586vx Humans subtly synchronize body movement during face-to-face conversation. In this context, bodily synchrony has been linked to affiliation and social bonding, task success and comprehension, and potential conflict. Almost all studies of conversational synchrony involve dyads, and relatively less is known about the structure of synchrony in groups larger than two. We conducted an optic flow analysis of body movement in triads engaged in face-to-face conversation, and explored a common measure of synchrony: time-aligned bodily covariation. We correlated this measure of synchrony with a diverse set of covariates related to the outcome of interactions. Triads showed higher maximum cross-correlation relative to a surrogate baseline, and 'meta-synchrony', in that composite dyads in a triad tended to show correlated structure. A windowed analysis also revealed that synchrony varies widely across an interaction. As in prior studies, average synchrony was low but statistically reliable... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/693586vx Tue, 5 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Dale, Rick Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Manson, Joseph H Gervais, Matthew M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/482783g2 We investigated the hypothesis that infants search in an acoustic space for vocalisations that elicit adult utterances and vice versa, inspired by research on animal and human foraging. Infant-worn recorders were used to collect day-long audio recordings, and infant speech-related and adult vocalisation onsets and offsets were automatically identified. We examined vocalisation-to-vocalisation steps, focusing on inter-vocalisation time intervals and distances in an acoustic space defined by mean pitch and mean amplitude, measured from the child’s perspective. Infant inter-vocalisation intervals were shorter immediately following a vocal response from an adult. Adult intervals were shorter following an infant response and adult inter-vocalisation pitch differences were smaller following the receipt of a vocal response from the infant. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that infants and caregivers are foraging vocally for social input. Increasing infant age was associated... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/482783g2 Mon, 20 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Ritwika, VPS Pretzer, Gina M Mendoza, Sara Shedd, Christopher Kello, Christopher T Gopinathan, Ajay Warlaumont, Anne S https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4pd0d52w Sexual assault interventions may be doing more harm than good with high-risk males https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4pd0d52w Tue, 9 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Malamuth, Neil M Huppin, Mark Linz, Daniel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3c49265n We investigated attitudes and behaviors associated with prostitution and sexual aggression among 101 men who buy sex and 101 age-, education-, and ethnicity-matched men who did not buy sex. Both groups tended to accept rape myths, be aware of harms of prostitution and trafficking, express ambivalence about the nature of prostitution, and believe that jail time and public exposure are the most effective deterrents to buying sex. Sex buyers were more likely than men who did not buy sex to report sexual aggression and likelihood to rape. Men who bought sex scored higher on measures of impersonal sex and hostile masculinity and had less empathy for prostituted women, viewing them as intrinsically different from other women. When compared with non-sex-buyers, these findings indicate that men who buy sex share certain key characteristics with men at risk of committing sexual aggression as documented by research based on the leading scientific model of the characteristics of non-criminal... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3c49265n Tue, 9 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Farley, Melissa Golding, Jacqueline M Matthews, Emily Schuckman Malamuth, Neil M Jarrett, Laura https://escholarship.org/uc/item/35z3x0x6 “Adding fuel to the fire”? Does exposure to non-consenting adult or to child pornography increase risk of sexual aggression? https://escholarship.org/uc/item/35z3x0x6 Tue, 9 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Malamuth, Neil M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15w066bw An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15w066bw Wed, 27 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Vouloumanos, Athena Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6bd370vn Many animal vocalizations contain nonlinear acoustic phenomena as a consequence of physiological arousal. In humans, nonlinear features are processed early in the auditory system, and are used to efficiently detect alarm calls and other urgent signals. Yet, high-level emotional and semantic contextual factors likely guide the perception and evaluation of roughness features in vocal sounds. Here we examined the relationship between perceived vocal arousal and auditory context. We presented listeners with nonverbal vocalizations (yells of a single vowel) at varying levels of portrayed vocal arousal, in two musical contexts (clean guitar, distorted guitar) and one non-musical context (modulated noise). As predicted, vocalizations with higher levels of portrayed vocal arousal were judged as more negative and more emotionally aroused than the same voices produced with low vocal arousal. Moreover, both the perceived valence and emotional arousal of vocalizations were significantly affected... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6bd370vn Tue, 26 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Liuni, Marco Ponsot, Emmanuel Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Aucouturier, JJ https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69w288c7 Life history theory examines how characteristics of organisms, such as age and size at maturity, may vary through natural selection as evolutionary responses that optimize fitness. Here we ask how predictions of age and size at maturity differ for the three classical fitness functions-intrinsic rate of natural increase r, net reproductive rate R0, and reproductive value Vx-for semelparous species. We show that different choices of fitness functions can lead to very different predictions of species behavior. In one's efforts to understand an organism's behavior and to develop effective conservation and management policies, the choice of fitness function matters. The central ingredient of our approach is the maturation reaction norm (MRN), which describes how optimal age and size at maturation vary with growth rate or mortality rate. We develop a practical geometric construction of MRNs that allows us to include different growth functions (linear growth and nonlinear von Bertalanffy... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69w288c7 Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Breck, James E Simon, Carl P Rutherford, Edward S Low, Bobbi S Lamberson, PJ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4176-9428 Rogers, Mark W https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19g208nb Traditionally different approaches to the study of cognition have been viewed as competing explanatory frameworks. An alternative view, explanatory pluralism, regards different approaches to the study of cognition as complementary ways of studying the same phenomenon, at specific temporal and spatial scales, using appropriate methodological tools. Explanatory pluralism has been often described abstractly, but has rarely been applied to concrete cases. We present a case study of explanatory pluralism. We discuss three separate ways of studying the same phenomenon: a perceptual decision-making task (Bahrami et al., 2010), where pairs of subjects share information to jointly individuate an oddball stimulus among a set of distractors. Each approach analyzed the same corpus but targeted different units of analysis at different levels of description: decision-making at the behavioral level, confidence sharing at the linguistic level, and acoustic energy at the physical level. We discuss... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19g208nb Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Abney, Drew H Dale, Rick Yoshimi, Jeff Kello, Chris T Tylén, Kristian Fusaroli, Riccardo https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5bc713mn “Feeling my Sister’s Pain”: Perceived Victim Suffering Moderates the Impact of Sexualized Music Videos on Fijian Women’s Responses to Men’s Intimate Partner Violence against Women https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5bc713mn Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Johnson, James D Edwards, Wren Malamuth, Neil Lecci, Len https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hw2p0ks Colaughter–simultaneous laughter between two or more individuals–allows listeners across different cultures and languages to quickly evaluate affiliation within a social group. We examined whether infants are sensitive to acoustic information in colaughter that indicates affiliation, specifically whether they can differentiate colaughter between friends and colaughter between strangers. In the first experiment, infants who heard alternating trials of colaughter between friends and strangers listened longer to colaughter between friends. In the second experiment, we examined whether infants were sensitive to the social context that was appropriate for each type of colaughter. Infants heard colaughter between friends and colaughter between strangers preceded by a silent visual scene depicting one of two different social contexts: either two people affiliating or turning away from each other. Infants looked longer when the social scene was incongruent with the type of colaughter.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hw2p0ks Tue, 2 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000 Vouloumanos, Athena Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h1032fh Laughter is a nonverbal vocalization occurring in every known culture, ubiquitous across all forms of human social interaction. Here, we examined whether listeners around the world, irrespective of their own native language and culture, can distinguish between spontaneous laughter and volitional laughter-laugh types likely generated by different vocal-production systems. Using a set of 36 recorded laughs produced by female English speakers in tests involving 884 participants from 21 societies across six regions of the world, we asked listeners to determine whether each laugh was real or fake, and listeners differentiated between the two laugh types with an accuracy of 56% to 69%. Acoustic analysis revealed that sound features associated with arousal in vocal production predicted listeners' judgments fairly uniformly across societies. These results demonstrate high consistency across cultures in laughter judgments, underscoring the potential importance of nonverbal vocal communicative... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h1032fh Tue, 14 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Fessler, Daniel MT https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7795-7500 Fusaroli, Riccardo Clint, Edward Amir, Dorsa Chávez, Brenda Denton, Kaleda K Díaz, Cinthya Duran, Lealaiauloto Togiaso Fanćovićová, Jana Fux, Michal Ginting, Erni Farida Hasan, Youssef Hu, Anning Kamble, Shanmukh V Kameda, Tatsuya Kuroda, Kiri Li, Norman P Luberti, Francesca R Peyravi, Raha Prokop, Pavol Quintelier, Katinka JP Shin, Hyun Jung Stieger, Stefan Sugiyama, Lawrence S van den Hende, Ellis A Viciana-Asensio, Hugo Yildizhan, Saliha Elif Yong, Jose C Yuditha, Tessa Zhou, Yi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/499304f7 Little is known about people's ability to detect subclinical psychopathy from others' quotidian social behavior, or about the correlates of variation in this ability. This study sought to address these questions using a thin slice personality judgment paradigm. We presented 108 undergraduate judges (70.4% female) with 1.5 minute video thin slices of zero-acquaintance triadic conversations among other undergraduates (targets: n = 105, 57.1% female). Judges completed self-report measures of general trust, caution, and empathy. Target individuals had completed the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale. Judges viewed the videos in one of three conditions: complete audio, silent, or audio from which semantic content had been removed using low-pass filtering. Using a novel other-rating version of the LSRP, judges' ratings of targets' primary psychopathy levels were significantly positively associated with targets' self-reports, but only in the complete audio condition. Judge... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/499304f7 Wed, 23 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Manson, Joseph H Gervais, Matthew M Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0056t9m4 Data and R code for manuscript "The perception of spontaneous and volitional laughter across 21 societies." https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0056t9m4 Wed, 7 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qq5s73c When speaking to infants, mothers often alter their speech compared to how they speak to adults, but findings for fathers are mixed. This study examined interactions (N&nbsp;=&nbsp;30) between fathers and infants (M_age &nbsp;±&nbsp;SD&nbsp;=&nbsp;7.8&nbsp;±&nbsp;4.3&nbsp;months) in a small-scale society in Vanuatu and two urban societies in North America. Fundamental frequency (F₀ ) and speech rate were measured in infant-directed and adult-directed speech. When speaking to infants, fathers in both groups increased their F₀ range, yet only Vanuatu fathers increased their average F₀ . Conversely, North American fathers slowed down their speech rate to infants, whereas Vanuatu fathers did not. Behavioral traits can vary across distant cultures while still potentially solving similar communicative problems. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qq5s73c Tue, 5 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Broesch, Tanya Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9j74p8nh Differences in vocal fundamental (<i>F</i>₀) and average formant (<i>F</i>_n) frequencies covary with body size in most terrestrial mammals, such that larger organisms tend to produce lower frequency sounds than smaller organisms, both between species and also across different sex and life-stage morphs within species. Here we examined whether three-month-old human infants are sensitive to the relationship between body size and sound frequencies. Using a violation-of-expectation paradigm, we found that infants looked longer at stimuli inconsistent with the relationship-that is, a smaller organism producing lower frequency sounds, and a larger organism producing higher frequency sounds-than at stimuli that were consistent with it. This effect was stronger for fundamental frequency than it was for average formant frequency. These results suggest that by three months of age, human infants are already sensitive to the biologically relevant covariation between vocalization... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9j74p8nh Tue, 5 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Pietraszewski, David Wertz, Annie E https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2145-5189 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Wynn, Karen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0cs7g4q9 Winner‐take‐all or long tail? A behavioral model of markets with increasing returns https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0cs7g4q9 Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Lamberson, PJ https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4176-9428 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fh72083 Correction for Bryant et al., Detecting affiliation in colaughter across 24 societies https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fh72083 Fri, 24 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-4026 Fessler, Daniel MT https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7795-7500 Fusaroli, Riccardo Clint, Edward Aaroe, Lene Apicella, Coren L Petersen, Michael Bang Bickham, Shaneikiah T Bolyanatz, Alexander Chavez, Brenda De Smet, Delphine Diaz, Cinthya Fancovicova, Jana Fux, Michal Giraldo-Perez, Paulina Hu, Anning Kamble, Shanmukh V Kameda, Tatsuya Li, Norman P Luberti, Francesca R Prokop, Pavol Quintelier, Katinka Scelza, Brooke A Shin, Hyun Jung Soler, Montserrat Stieger, Stefan Toyokawa, Wataru van den Hende, Ellis A Viciana-Asensio, Hugo Yildizhan, Saliha Elif Yong, Jose C Yuditha, Tessa Zhou, Yi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99j8r0gx Complete dataset for manuscript "Detecting affiliation in colaughter across 24 societies" in PNAS. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/99j8r0gx Wed, 23 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g9321sd Scholars do not usually test for the duration of the effects of mass communication, but when they do, they typically find rapid decay. Persuasive impact may end almost as soon as communication ends. Why so much decay? Does mass communication produce any long-term effects? How should this decay color our understanding of the effects of mass communication? We examine these questions with data from the effects of advertising in the 2000 presidential election and 2006 subnational elections, but argue that our model and results are broadly applicable within the field of political communication. We find that the bulk of the persuasive impact of advertising decays quickly, but that some effect in the presidential campaign endures for at least 6 weeks. These results, which are similar in rolling cross-section survey data and county-level data on actual presidential vote, appear to reflect a mix of memory-based processing (whose effects last only as long as short-term memory lasts) and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g9321sd Wed, 21 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Hill, Seth J https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3785-1533 Lo, James Vavreck, Lynn Zaller, John https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1vn8x19w Irony is often related to humor, both in spoken and written language. One possibility is that humor arises once people reconcile the incongruity between what speakers say and imply when using irony. Humor automatically emerges in these cases given the release of tension following a momentary sense of disparity. Our claim is that this proposal does not capture many of the dynamic complexities in real-world ironic discourse. We describe psychological research on irony understanding showing that ironic meanings are not always understood via a process of drawing conversational implicatures. Studies on people's spontaneous laughter when using irony suggest that the recognition of incongruity between what is said and implied is not necessary for eliciting humor. Laughter occurs at various places in conversation, and not necessarily at the end of speakers' utterances. People also laugh for reasons other than humor, such as to signal affiliation. Overall, finding the humor in irony is... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1vn8x19w Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Gibbs, Raymond W Bryant, Gregory A Colston, Herbert L https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kn9d58m During conversation, interlocutors coordinate their behavior on many levels. Two distinct forms of behavioral coordination have been empirically linked with affiliation and cooperation during or following face-to-face interaction: behavior matching and interpersonal synchrony. Only the latter form constitutes behavioral entrainment involving a coupling between independent oscillators. We present the first study of the association between spontaneously occurring behavioral coordination and post-interaction economic game play. Triads of same-sexed strangers conversed for 10. min, after which each participant played an unannounced one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) toward each co-participant. When dyads had higher language style matching scores (LSM: Gonzales, A.L., Hancock, J.T., &amp; Pennebaker, J.W. (2010). Language style matching as a predictor of social dynamics in small groups. Communication Research, 31, 3-19), the individuals evaluated each other more positively, but they... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kn9d58m Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Manson, Joseph H Bryant, Gregory A Gervais, Matthew M Kline, Michelle A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wn5704n Laughter is a universally produced vocal signal that plays an important role in human social interaction. Researchers have distinguished between spontaneous and volitional laughter, but no empirical work has explored possible acoustic and perceptual differences. If spontaneous laughter is an honest signal of cooperative intent (e.g., derived from play breathing patterns), then the ability to mimic these sounds volitionally could have shaped perceptual systems to be attuned to aspects of spontaneous laughs that are harder to fake-features associated with phylogenetically older vocal control mechanisms. We extracted spontaneous laughs from conversations between friends and volitional laughs elicited by instruction without other provocation. In three perception experiments we found that, 1) participants could distinguish between spontaneous and volitional laughter, 2) when laugh speed was increased (duration decreased 33% and pitch held constant), all laughs were judged as more "real,"... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wn5704n Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Bryant, Gregory A Aktipis, C Athena https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0ct0b2zz When speaking to infants, adults typically alter the acoustic properties of their speech in a variety of ways compared with how they speak to other adults; for example, they use higher pitch, increased pitch range, more pitch variability, and slower speech rate. Research shows that these vocal changes happen similarly across industrialized populations, but no studies have carefully examined basic acoustic properties of infant-directed (ID) speech in traditional societies. Moreover, some scholars have suggested that ID speech is culturally specific and does not exist in some small-scale societies. We examined fundamental frequency (F0) production and speech rate in mothers speaking to both infants and adults in three cultures: Fijians, Kenyans, and North Americans. In all three cultures, speakers used higher F0 when speaking to infants relative to when speaking to other adults, and they also used significantly greater F0 variation and fewer syllables per second. Previous research... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0ct0b2zz Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Broesch, Tanya L Bryant, Gregory A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92x0b521 If Looks Could Kill: Anger Attributions are Intensified by Affordances for Doing Harm https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92x0b521 Mon, 16 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000 Holbrook, Colin Galperin, Andrew Fessler, Daniel M.T. Johnson, Kerri L. Bryant, Gregory A. Haselton, Martie G.