Regulating Feelings During Interpersonal Conflicts by Changing Voice Self-perception

Abstract

Emotions play a major role in how interpersonal conflicts unfold. Although several strategies and technological approaches have been proposed for emotion regulation, they often require conscious attention and effort. This often limits their efficacy in practice. In this paper, we propose a different approach inspired by self-perception theory: noticing that people are often reacting to the perception of their own behavior, we artificially change their perceptions to influence their emotions. We conducted two studies to evaluate the potential of this approach by automatically and subtly altering how people perceive their own voice. In one study, participants that received voice feedback with a calmer tone during relationship conflicts felt less anxious. In the other study, participants who listened to their own voices with a lower pitch during contentious debates felt more powerful. We discuss the implications of our findings and the opportunities for designing automatic and less perceptible emotion regulation systems.