Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): Perceived differences in social status between speaker and listener affect the speaker's vocal characteristics. In: PLoS one 12 (6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179407
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28614413 Abstract: Non-verbal behaviours, including voice characteristics during speech, are an important way to communicate social status. Research suggests that individuals can obtain high social status through dominance (using force and intimidation) or through prestige (by being knowledgeable and skilful). However, little is known regarding differences in the vocal behaviour of men and women in response to dominant and prestigious individuals. Here, we tested within-subject differences in vocal parameters of interviewees during simulated job interviews with dominant, prestigious, and neutral employers (targets), while responding to questions which were classified as introductory, personal, and interpersonal. We found that vocal modulations were apparent between responses to the neutral and high-status targets, with participants, especially those who perceived themselves as low in dominance, increasing fundamental frequency (F0) in response to the dominant and prestigious targets relative to the neutral target. Self-perceived prestige, however, was less related to contextual vocal modulations than self-perceived dominance. Finally, we found that differences in the context of the interview questions participants were asked to respond to (introductory, personal, interpersonal), also affected their vocal parameters, being more prominent in responses to personal and interpersonal questions. Overall, our results suggest that people adjust their vocal parameters according to the perceived social status of the listener as well as their own self-perceived social status.
Keywords: Acoustic Stimulation, Adolescent, Adult, Auditory Perception/physiology, Diagnostic Self Evaluation, Female, fundamental frequency, Humans, Interviews as Topic/methods, Macht, Male, Middle Aged, Social Class, Social Perception, Socioeconomic Factors, Soziale Dominanz, Speech Acoustics, Speech/physiology, Status / biologische Marker, Stimme, Stimme / Prosodie, Voice/physiology, Young Adult -
(2017): Antioxidant allocation modulates sperm quality across changing social environments. In: PLoS one 12 (5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176385
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28472052 Abstract: In promiscuous species, male reproductive success depends on their ability to mate with fertile females and on the fertilizing ability of their sperm. In such species, theory predicts that, owing to a trade-off between pre- and post-copulatory reproductive traits, males with lesser access to females should increase resource investment into those sperm traits that enhance fertilization success-usually referred to as ejaculate quality. This prediction has been validated in several taxa, yet studies on the physiological mechanisms modulating ejaculate quality are lacking. Sperm cells are highly vulnerable to oxidative stress, which impairs male fertility. Therefore, males that better protect their sperm from oxidative stress are expected to achieve higher ejaculate quality. Based on theoretical expectations, and since social dominance is a major determinant of mating opportunity, we predicted that subordinate males should invest more into the antioxidant protection of their sperm in order to achieve higher ejaculate quality. We maintained 60 male and 60 female wild-caught house sparrows Passer domesticus in outdoor aviaries, where we experimentally manipulated male social status to test our predictions. We measured cellular oxidative stress and enzymatic antioxidant activity in blood and sperm both before and after manipulating social ranks. Before manipulating the social status, we found that ejaculate viability correlated with oxidative stress level in sperm, with dominant males producing more oxidized and less viable ejaculates. Further, males at the lower end of the hierarchy produced ejaculates of similar quality to those of dominant males, suggesting that restricted access to resources might limit male reproductive strategies. After experimentally manipulating the social status, males matched their ejaculate quality to their new rank, while increases in antioxidant investment into ejaculates paralleled increases in ejaculate viability. Oxidative stress has been proposed as a general constraint to the evolution of life histories. Our results highlight oxidative stress and strategic antioxidant allocation as important proximate physiological mechanisms underlying male reproductive strategies.
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(2017): Towards a social functional account of laughter. Acoustic features convey reward, affiliation, and dominance. In: PLoS one 12 (8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0183811
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28850589 Abstract: Recent work has identified the physical features of smiles that accomplish three tasks fundamental to human social living: rewarding behavior, establishing and managing affiliative bonds, and negotiating social status. The current work extends the social functional account to laughter. Participants (N = 762) rated the degree to which reward, affiliation, or dominance (between-subjects) was conveyed by 400 laughter samples acquired from a commercial sound effects website. Inclusion of a fourth rating dimension, spontaneity, allowed us to situate the current approach in the context of existing laughter research, which emphasizes the distinction between spontaneous and volitional laughter. We used 11 acoustic properties extracted from the laugh samples to predict participants' ratings. Actor sex moderated, and sometimes even reversed, the relation between acoustics and participants' judgments. Spontaneous laughter appears to serve the reward function in the current framework, as similar acoustic properties guided perceiver judgments of spontaneity and reward: reduced voicing and increased pitch, increased duration for female actors, and increased pitch slope, center of gravity, first formant, and noisiness for male actors. Affiliation ratings diverged from reward in their sex-dependent relationship to intensity and, for females, reduced pitch range and raised second formant. Dominance displayed the most distinct pattern of acoustic predictors, including increased pitch range, reduced second formant in females, and decreased pitch variability in males. We relate the current findings to existing findings on laughter and human and non-human vocalizations, concluding laughter can signal much more that felt or faked amusement.
Keywords: Acoustics, Adult, Aged, Art der Beziehung zum Interaktionspartner, Belohnung, center of gravity, Dauer, Female, formant, Gender, Gestik/Mimik, Humans, Klanghöhe (pitch), Kommunikations-/Interaktionsprinzipien, Lächeln, Lachen, Laughter/psychology, Male, Middle Aged, noisiness, pitch slope, Reward, Sanktionierung, Sex Factors, Social Dominance, Social Identification, Soziale Distanz, Soziale Dominanz, Spontaneität beim Lachen, Status / biologische Marker, Stimmhaftigkeit (voicing), Young Adult, Zugehörigkeit (affiliation)
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