Why some people sound angrier when they’re complaining

By Stephen Beech

People from different cultures sound angrier when complaining, suggests a new study.

The findings highlight that complaints could be shaped by cultural and social conventions, say scientists.

Previous research has established that emotions are reflected in our voice.

That helps us communicate more purposefully and gives listeners cues as to how they should interpret what we say.

Researchers in Switzerland and Canada set out to establish what emotions predominate in complaints – and how they differ between groups, concentrating on French speakers living in Canada, known as Québécois, and French speakers living in Europe.

Study first author Dr. Maël Mauchand, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva, said: “Complaining is differentiated from neutral speech by changes in vocal expression.

"Complainers tend to change their intonation, pitch, rhythm, and emphasis, making them sound more emotive and expressive.

“We show that complaining strategies show specific variations across two francophone cultures, with Québécois sounding more angry or surprised and French speakers sounding sadder.”

He explained that knowing in detail what complaints sound like could help researchers understand how they are perceived and how they elicit empathy in others.

For the experiment, the researchers recruited eight speakers - four French and four Québécois- who recorded 84 short sentences in a neutral and a complaining voice – irrespective of linguistic content.

Then, 40 people living in Quebec, half of which had grown up in France, assessed the emotions - happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful or disgusted - in a selection of utterances.

Dr. Mauchand said: “Complaining strategies seem consistent towards defining a general ‘complaining tone of voice’, with a few specific cultural variations."

For example, he says complaints were delivered with a higher and more variable pitch as well as louder and slower in general.

But those parameters differed slightly between cultures. For example, the French spoke at a higher pitch. In contrast, Québécois showed greater pitch variability, which indicates more pronounced changes in intonation across their complaint.

Dr. Mauchand says complaints reconstruct emotional states and speakers complain to convey or re-live a negative experience, so they convey strong emotions that stress the negativity.

On an emotional level, listening participants rated Québécois as sounding angrier, more surprised, and more disgusted than French speakers, whereas French speakers were rated as sounding sadder.

Dr. Mauchand said: “There may be cultural norms on what a complaint sounds like in France or in Quebec, influenced by their use.

“The French are said to complain quite often – if complaining is frequent and ritualised, it makes sense that complainers try to make their voice sound less aggressive, for example by using higher intonation and sounding more sad than angry.”

But he said Québécois are generally more expressive in their speech, which might explain why high-arousal emotions such as surprise or anger are more prominent in their complaints.

Dr. Mauchand said: “There may be social conventions on what a complaint sounds like in a particular culture, which can be learned as we grow up.

“How we complain is a subtle interplay between emotion, social context, and cultural display rules.”

The researchers pointed out that their sample size, limited in both the number of speakers and cultures represented, could mean their findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Communication, aren’t generalisable.

Dr. Mauchand said complaints may also take other forms in longer statements or interactions.

He says further research could examine if such cultural differences can be found in speakers of the same language who grew up in different cultures.

But Dr. Mauchand says the study highlights the "critical" role of the tone of voice in social interactions and the information may be used in studies about communication disorders and in therapy training.

He added: “As an immediate application, it could encourage people to be more attentive.

“Not just to what people say, but how they say it – and what it implies.”