Do empathic people respond differently to emotional voices?

Past research on the use of motivational voice (or motivational prosody) has found that the way we modulate acoustic cues when we speak can have profound effects on others. However, it is unclear whether the effects also hold for other forms of social communication, such as emotional tone of voice, and what role empathy plays. Across three experiments (two preregistered), we found very large effects indicating that listening to an angry vs. happy voice reduced positive affect in participants, lowered their self-esteem, and eroded their intention to disclose information. These effects were mediated by perceived effort to interact with the speaker, feelings of discomfort, and norm violation, which were higher for an angry voice than for a happy one. Importantly, the effects were, as predicted, stronger for participants scoring high in cognitive empathy and especially affective resonance: More empathic people reported even lower positive affect, self-esteem, and intention to disclose information after listening to the angry vs. happy sounding speaker. This suggests that empathic people are more strongly affected by the tone of voice, even if emotions are only conveyed through vocal tone, without face-to-face interaction. Our findings help to advance related research areas and have important implications for clinical and organizational settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).