ReviewPsychonomic bulletin & review2020
Good vibrations: A review of vocal expressions of positive emotions.
Review in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Fundamental Frequency of Voice as a Potential Stress Biomarker: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Stress and health : journal of the International Society for the Investigation of Stress · 2025Pooled it
- Vocal display rules in everyday life: when is it appropriate to laugh, sigh or scream?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The Falling Tone That Rolls Down the Hill and Gets Slumped: Vertical Mapping of Lexical Tones with Motion and Valence.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- U.S. English-Speaking Children and Adults Exhibit a "Gleam-Glum" Sound Symbolic Effect Linking Phonemic Vowel Sounds With Emotional Valence.Cognitive science · 2026Article
- The affective iconicity of segment and tone in Standard Chinese.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Developing a Multimodal Screening Algorithm for Mild Cognitive Impairment and Early Dementia in Home Health Care: Protocol for a Cross-Sectional Case-Control Study Using Speech Analysis, Large Language Models, and Electronic Health Records.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
- How teachers' dominant interpersonal behavior shapes student emotions in mathematics classrooms: a multimodal voice analysis and critical incident study.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Acoustic markers of emotional expression in professional lyrical singing.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Speak or shout? Nonverbal vocalizations promote rapid detection of emotions in vocal communication.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- Vocal pitch as an acoustic marker of social support efficacy in women friendships.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- The relationship between cognitive impairment and acoustic features in major depressive disorder: a longitudinal cohort study.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- The Sound of Emotional Prosody: Nearly 3 Decades of Research and Future Directions.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Motivating tones to enhance education: The effects of vocal awareness on teachers' voices.The British journal of educational psychology · 2025Article
- How to talk to parents.Pediatric radiology · 2025Review
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- Intact sensorimotor rhythm abilities but altered audiovisual integration in cochlear implant users.PloS one · 2025Article
- Emotion in Nonverbal Communication: Comparing Animal and Human Vocalizations and Human Text Messages.Emotion review : journal of the International Society for Research on Emotion · 2025Article
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- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Researchers examining nonverbal communication of emotions are becoming increasingly interested in differentiations between different positive emotional states like interest, relief, and pride. But despite the importance of the voice in communicating emotion in general and positive emotion in particular, there is to date no systematic review of what characterizes vocal expressions of different positive emotions. Furthermore, integration and synthesis of current findings are lacking. In this review, we comprehensively review studies (N = 108) investigating acoustic features relating to specific positive emotions in speech prosody and nonverbal vocalizations. We find that happy voices are generally loud with considerable variability in loudness, have high and variable pitch, and are high in the first two formant frequencies. When specific positive emotions are directly compared with each other, pitch mean, loudness mean, and speech rate differ across positive emotions, with patterns mapping onto clusters of emotions, so-called emotion families. For instance, pitch is higher for epistemological emotions (amusement, interest, relief), moderate for savouring emotions (contentment and pleasure), and lower for a prosocial emotion (admiration). Some, but not all, of the differences in acoustic patterns also map on to differences in arousal levels. We end by pointing to limitations in extant work and making concrete proposals for future research on positive emotions in the voice.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.