Do we feel better from reading a positive story aloud with appropriate emotions?

Abstract

The present study investigates the effects of reading aloud with appropriate emotions on the reader's feelings. The participants in our series of experiments were university students. Two positive stories were selected through a pilot study. In order to identify the characteristics of reading aloud with appropriate emotions, the participants rated their impressions of reading with and without appropriate emotions in Experiment 1. The results indicated that reading aloud with appropriate emotions has the following four features: appropriate intonation, appropriate stress, use of voice tones that match the feelings of the story protagonists, and clear vocalization. In contrast, reading aloud without appropriate emotions only has the feature of clear vocalization. In Experiment 2, we hypothesized that only reading with appropriate emotions would elicit within the reader similar feelings to those portrayed in the story. This is because a reader needs to deeply understand the story content and protagonists' feelings in order to read aloud with appropriate emotions. We had participants read a positive story in two ways, either reading aloud with or without appropriate emotions, and rate their emotional states both before and after reading in each condition. The results of a 2 x 2 (manner of reading x period of test) within-subjects ANOVA revealed that participants only felt better after read a positive story aloud with appropriate emotions. We argue that this is because the manner of reading aloud with appropriate emotions functions as a kind of trigger for emotionally engaging a reader with a story and its protagonists.