PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This study investigates how acoustic and lexical properties of spontaneous speech in dialogs affect perceived social attractive- ness in terms of speaker likeability, friendliness, competence, and self-confidence. We analyze a database of longer sponta- neous dialogs between German female speakers and the mu- tual ratings that dialog partners assigned to one another after every conversation. Thus the ratings reflect long-term impres- sions based on dialog behavior. Using linear mixed models, we investigate both classical acoustic-prosodic and lexical param- eters as well as parameters that capture the degree of speak- ers’ adaptation, or “convergence”, of these parameters to each other. Specifically we find that likeability is correlated with the speaker’s lexical convergence as well as with her convergence in f0 peak height. Friendliness is significantly related to vari- ation in intensity. For competence, the proportion of positive words in the dialog, variation in shimmer, and overall phonetic convergence are significant correlates. Self-confidence finally is related to several prosodic, phonetic, and lexical adaptation parameters. In some cases, the effect depends on whether inter- locutors also had eye contact during their conversation. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that in addition to clas- sical parameters, convergence parameters play an important role in the mutual perception of social attractiveness.