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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Emotion Science
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1357975
This article is part of the Research Topic Emotions and Artificial Intelligence View all 8 articles

Emotional responses of Korean and Chinese women to Hangeul phonemes in artificial intelligence voice gender

Provisionally accepted
Min-Sun Lee Min-Sun Lee 1Gi-Eun Lee Gi-Eun Lee 2San-Ho Lee San-Ho Lee 1Jang-Han Lee Jang-Han Lee 1*
  • 1 Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 2 Institute of Cultural Diversity Content, Seoul, Republic of Korea

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The purpose of this study was to explore the arousal and valence that people feel in relation to Hangeul phonemes according to the gender of an AI speaker through comparison with other cultures. For this purpose, 42 Hangeul phonemes were used in a combination of 3 Korean vowels and 14 Korean consonants to explore cultural differences in arousal, valence, and basic 6 emotions according to the gender of an AI speaker. A total of 136 Korean and Chinese women were recruited and randomly assigned to one of two conditions in a 2 (voice gender: female or male). This study revealed that Korean and Chinese women showed remarkable differences in arousal for male voices, and Chinese women in particular showed clear differences in emotional perceptions of male and female voices in response to voiced consonants. These results confirm that arousal and valence may differ in articulation types and vowels depending on cultural differences and that voice gender can also affect perceived emotions. This principle can be used as evidence for sound symbolism and has practical implications for voice gender and branding in AI applications.

    Keywords: phoneme, Arousal, Valence, Emotions, sound symbolism

    Received: 19 Dec 2023; Accepted: 04 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lee, Lee, Lee and Lee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jang-Han Lee, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.