Our Mind: The Meaning of Fear and the Sound of Gender

Fear and anxiety are universal experiences that resonate with many of us. But how can these complex emotions be studied in a laboratory setting? This talk explores the fear conditioning paradigm, an important research method that unveils how processes such as fear acquisition and fear extinction shape our physiological and psychological responses, which is key for improving our understanding of anxiety disorders. In fear acquisition paradigms, participants learn to associate a neutral stimulus with an aversive one, leading to a conditioned fear response. Yet, it is not just the intensity of the aversive stimulus that shapes this response; expectations might play a crucial role. My ongoing research delves into how aversive expectations can intensify the perceived aversiveness of a stimulus. Furthermore, once a conditioned response is established, it often extends beyond the initial stimulus, affecting responses to similar stimuli through a process known as fear generalization. Research indicates that individual differences in trait anxiety influence the degree to which fear generalizes among individuals. Exploring individual differences across various aspects of fear conditioning is a central focus of my research, aimed at understanding the diverse ways people respond to fear. Moreover, participants can learn to extinguish a fear response by associating a previously feared stimulus with safety. But does this process erase fear, or does it merely create a new, benign association? Join us as we delve into the scientific methods used to unravel the complexities of fear and anxiety in a laboratory setting.

The human voice enables interaction partners to communicate various aspects of our social identity. One axis of social differentiation is gender. Phonetic differences between typical female and male voices concern, for example, the fundamental frequency (how high/low a voice is or sounds), the vowel space extension (how strongly the vowels are acoustically differentiated from each other), or voice quality (e.g. the degree to which the voice is breathy). While early studies were primarily concerned with acoustic differences between women and men, the current study considers gender as a multifaceted and multidimensional construct. Correspondingly, different aspects of the gendered self are considered, including social and biological dimensions. One component of social gender that is rarely addressed is the gender-role self-concept (the extent to which someone describes themself as typically masculine and/or feminine). The present research aims to empirically investigate acoustic correlates of different gender facets using a gender-diverse sample of speakers.
Results show speakers to differ in their acoustic features according to their gender identities. Additionally, for nonbinary speakers, differences have been found between those who have been assigned female and those who have been assigned male at birth. Further, within each gender identity group, gender-role self-concept correlated with some acoustic features (e.g., voice quality). Taken together, the study shows the acoustic and gender-related heterogeneity of nonbinary speakers and presents how the acoustic markers are influenced by the various dimensions of the gendered self.