Your Prosody Matters! The Effect of Controlling Tone of Voice on Listeners’ Experienced Pressure, Closeness, and Intention to Collaborate with the Speaker

According to self-determination theory, speakers can communicate with listeners either in more controlling or in more autonomy-supportive ways. Whereas most previous studies focused on the lexical semantics (i.e., words) of both communication styles, the current research examined whether experimentally induced controlling versus autonomy-supportive tone of voice differentially predicts listeners’ experienced pressure, closeness, and intentions to collaborate, even when listeners are exposed to these communications only briefly. In two experimental studies (Study 1, N = 61, Mage = 31.51; Study 2, N = 111, Mage = 44.73), multilevel analyses indicated that voice quality is the most critical parameter distinguishing between controlling and autonomy-supportive prosody. That is, sentences spoken with a harsher, relative to a softer, tone of voice were perceived as more pressuring (Studies 1 and 2), with higher levels of experienced pressure following harsh voices explaining why listeners felt less close to and anticipated less intent to collaborate with controlling speakers (Study 2). Study 2 applied these principles in the parenting context and shed further light on the robustness of these findings by examining whether the tone of voice effect occurs regardless of the target of the communication (i.e., parents themselves or their children) and interacts with parents’ authoritarianism and causality orientation. Despite a few significant interactions, a vast majority of listeners interpreted controlling prosody more negatively than autonomy supportive prosody. The discussion focuses on how controlling tone of voice interferes with listeners’ motivation.