Our first focus area revolves around the voices of villains and heroes, and more generally around the voices of evil.

The classical Hollywood hero and villain not only act differently, but speak differently as well [1]. By definition, villains encode immoral characteristics, such as greed and callousness. Therefore, voice qualities associated with villains may become culturally “vilified” by association [2]. We will explore and explain these connections through quantitative and qualitative analyses of film corpora, targeting the following research questions:

• What are the pervasive and enduring differences between the voice of the hero and villain in Hollywood film? Are these associations better explained “top-down,” as the expressions of Hollywood ideology, or “bottom-up,” as the expression of basic psychological mechanisms?
• Are audiences able to tell the voice of the villain apart from the voice of the hero, even if they are unfamiliar with the film in question? If yes, then what cues do they rely on?

In addition, things like people, places, and music can be “creepy.” Recent research suggests that the perception of creepiness in diverse domains is unified by feelings of discomfort and impressions of threatening unpredictability [3]. We extend this line of research to creepy voices as well, with the following questions in mind:

• What acoustic qualities characterise a voice which is perceived as creepy?
• What kinds of social judgment are elicited by a creepy voice? For example, are people with creepy voices judged to be more unpredictable or aggressive?

References

[1] Kjeldgaard-Christiansen. J. 2016. Evil Origins: A Darwinian Genealogy of the Popcultural Villain. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences 10 (2): 109–22. 

[2]   Lippi-Green, R. 1997. English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge.

[3]   McAndrew, F.T.; Koehnke, S.S. 2016. On the Nature of Creepiness. New Ideas in Psychology 43: 10-15.