{"pk":49426,"title":"When Machines Speak with Feeling: Investigating Emotional Prosody, Authenticity, and Trust in AI vs. Human Voices","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Emotional prosody---vocal cues that convey affect---profoundly influences how listeners interpret a speaker's intentions. We conducted two studies comparing AI- and human-generated emotional speech. In Study 1 (N=38), participants categorized five emotions (happy, sad, angry, neutral, fear) expressed by human voices and by an advanced text-to-speech (TTS) system. Human recordings exhibited higher overall accuracy (79.82% vs. 72.65%) and were rated significantly more natural, an effect partially explained by micro-perturbations (e.g., jitter, shimmer) that enhanced perceived authenticity. In Study 2 (N=53), these validated stimuli were incorporated into short scenarios, with each speaker labeled as either ``human'' or ``AI.'' Even when participants heard identical clips, those informed that the speaker was human exhibited greater trust and empathy, resulting in higher donation and advice-following rates. Although contemporary TTS systems effectively convey broad affective states, explicit AI labeling reduces perceived credibility and social engagement, underscoring the critical role that preexisting expectations play in human--AI communication.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Emotion; Emotion Perception; Empathy; Quantitative Behavior"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8vr8s6h8","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Guangrui","middle_name":"","last_name":"Fan","name_suffix":"","institution":"Taiyuan University of Science and Technology","department":""},{"first_name":"Dandan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Liu","name_suffix":"","institution":"Universiti Malaya","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T10:00:00-08:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49426/galley/37388/download/"}]}