Lewandowski, N. , Krämer, C. , Duran, D. & Schweitzer, A.
Institute for Natural Language Processing, University of Stuttgart
The current study investigated the impact of personality and social factors on phonetic convergence within the GECO database (46 spontaneous German dialogs of approx. 25 minutes length each). We quantified convergence by amplitude envelope similarities between identical words that were said multiple times by both dialog partners. Linear mixed models were employed to predict the envelope similarities using four personality dimensions from a self-monitoring test as fixed effects: sensitivity to expressive behavior and social cues (henceforth sensitivity), acting behavior, other-directedness and extraversion; further fixed effects were time (early vs. late in the dialog) and post-dialog self-ratings (self-perceived dominance and self-confidence). Word type was included as a random factor. Main effects were found for: dominance, acting, and extraversion; and 2-way-interactions for time* with, respectively, *dominance, *acting and *sensitivity. The more extroverted both speakers, the higher in general was the amplitude envelope similarity in the dialog. A large difference in dominance between the partners increased similarity over time (i.e. convergence), whereas higher acting and sensitivity scores decreased envelope similarity over time (i.e. divergence), albeit to a much smaller extent. The results support the idea that personality plays an important role in phonetic adaptation during conversational interactions.