The Influence of the Attachment Style on the Decoding Accuracy of Emotional Vocal Expressions

This study aimed at examining the effects of attachment style on the ability of recognizing emotions, from acoustic stimuli, in subjects with induced emotional states. An adequate sample of 145 university students (71 females and 74 males; mean age = 23.37 ± 2.05) was recruited from the Second University of Naples (Italy). The subjects, classified for attachment style into Secure, Insecure Dismissing, Insecure Preoccupied and Insecure Fearful, were randomly assigned with one of three (sad, fearful or neutral) different elicited emotional conditions induced by viewing short movies. Immediately after the mood-induction procedure, subjects undertook a vocal emotion-decoding task. Secure subjects were more accurate in recognizing surprise and sadness than the Insecure group; Fearfully attached individuals were less accurate in identifying vocal stimuli conveying sadness than the Securely and Dismissively attached groups. The recognition of vocal stimuli was not affected by induced mood conditions. No mood-congruity effects were found. The study sheds light on some of the factors underlying the emotion-recognition process. Possible explanations of the contribution of attachment style on the ability to decode vocal stimuli were discussed.