The Effects of Fujisaki Model Parameter Manipulation on Perceived Charisma

Abstract

In an earlier exploratory study we examined the prosody of speeches by two IT industry leaders, Steve Jobs and Marc Zuckerberg, whose perceived charisma differs greatly, with Jobs usually regarded as the much more captivating speaker. This previous study focused mainly on fundamental frequency contours as well as on the perceived local speech rate. Instead of analyzing the raw F0 data directly, we modeled the F0 contours using the Fujisaki model and examined the differences in the respective model components. Whereas in our comparison between Jobs and Zuckerberg we were only able to examine distributions of Fujisaki model parameters, in the current study we decided to systematically vary some of the Fujisaki model parameters on a fixed set of utterances and investigate their effects on perceived charisma. We found that in general pitch range extensions are beneficial, especially when connected to accented syllables, but also that effects differ considerably between male and female speakers.