Relationship of Prosody Perception to Personality and Aggression

One-hundred-fifteen participants (73 female, 42 male) were evaluated for prosody, or vocal emotion, perception, personality factors, relational aggression and physical aggression. The male participants reported higher levels of physical aggression, and the female participants reported greater Neuroticism, consistent with other data. For the male participants, better perception of prosody was related to both greater Extraversion and greater Conscientiousness, all involved in interpersonal functioning. These relationships were not found in the female participants, but there was a relationship between perception of prosody and relational aggression. Women who were better at perceiving the emotional status of others based on vocal cues were less relationally aggressive. Perhaps greater relational aggression reflects a poor adaptation to diminished ability to perceive emotional status.