A study on the validity of using a voice scale for evaluating emotions

Abstract

The purpose of our study was to examine the validity of using a voice-quality scale for emotion evaluation (Ikemoto & Suzuki, 2008). We tried to determine the criteria for discriminating between ten emotions (surprise, excitement, joy, contentment, relaxedness, drowsiness, sadness, cold-anger, hot-anger, and fear) and using this subscale we calculated the hit-rate for the ten emotions. The participants (n=72) produced vocal expressions for each of the ten emotions from which we evaluated the scale. The result of canonical discriminant analysis revealed three significant discriminant functions (activation, valence, and tenseness). The average hit-rate for all emotions was 56.90 percent. Hence we conclude that the scale is valid.