How Do You Say ‘Hello’? Personality Impressions from Brief Novel Voices

TLDR

Listeners form personality impressions from a novel voice, influencing interactions, yet the psychological and acoustic bases of these rapid, first‑experience judgments remain poorly understood, especially compared to studies of extended speech. The study aimed to assess whether brief utterances of “hello” elicit consistent personality judgments across listeners. The authors conducted an online experiment where 320 participants rated 64 sub‑second “hello” utterances on 10 personality traits. The experiment revealed that brief “hello” utterances yield consistent personality judgments, that a two‑dimensional social‑voice space of Valence and Dominance explains ratings for both genders, and that higher Valence and Dominance boost perceived male attractiveness while Valence alone drives female attractiveness, offering a basis for predicting and engineering personality impressions in synthetic voices.

Abstract

On hearing a novel voice, listeners readily form personality impressions of that speaker. Accurate or not, these impressions are known to affect subsequent interactions; yet the underlying psychological and acoustical bases remain poorly understood. Furthermore, hitherto studies have focussed on extended speech as opposed to analysing the instantaneous impressions we obtain from first experience. In this paper, through a mass online rating experiment, 320 participants rated 64 sub-second vocal utterances of the word ‘hello’ on one of 10 personality traits. We show that: (1) personality judgements of brief utterances from unfamiliar speakers are consistent across listeners; (2) a two-dimensional ‘social voice space’ with axes mapping Valence (Trust, Likeability) and Dominance, each driven by differing combinations of vocal acoustics, adequately summarises ratings in both male and female voices; and (3) a positive combination of Valence and Dominance results in increased perceived male vocal Attractiveness, whereas perceived female vocal Attractiveness is largely controlled by increasing Valence. Results are discussed in relation to the rapid evaluation of personality and, in turn, the intent of others, as being driven by survival mechanisms via approach or avoidance behaviours. These findings provide empirical bases for predicting personality impressions from acoustical analyses of short utterances and for generating desired personality impressions in artificial voices.