Screaming can be associated with all kinds of emotions. We can be excited, scared or angry. Therefore, heYelling is related to the expression of emotions. However, we cannot tell from the volume what feelings the person shouting has. There is also research related to this.
For example, in a 1996 article Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Rainer Banse and Klaus R. Scherer) The authors analyzed 224 interpretations of 14 emotions by professional actors.
Methodology is important because it is what they have Recordings designed to show emotional states. Thus they can analyze aspects of expression and recognition. To say that people who talk out loud feel more than others, we need to compare their normal emotional experience. In this case, a comparative analysis was not performed between groups of people according to their normalized volume.
The way you speak affects emotions
In addition to these works where voice volume has been analyzed, others have also been done in which speaking style is manipulated. In a 1993 study, Aaron W. Sigman and Stephen Boyle They asked participants to recall personal events and recount them using different speaking styles. When they described situations of fear and anxiety using a fast and loud speaking style, There was the highest level of mental activity (both subjective and cardiovascular). An interaction between expression and experience was found.
They found something similar in 1990 Sigman and his colleagues are furious. In this case, participants described episodes that made them angry. When they used a fast, loud speaking style, they showed higher levels of overt anger and greater blood pressure and heart rate responses than when they used their normal speaking style. But these are results obtained in specific laboratory work.
It may also be that volume is used as an intimidation tactic. In a 2024 paper, the author analyzed over 3,000 human vocalizations and conducted four perception tests. They found that loud speech was an effective strategy for communicating power and aggression.
To understand the process of conversation, It is important to distinguish between emotions and behavior. According to the American Psychological Association, aggression is behavior intended to harm. Neither necessary nor sufficient for the expression of anger. It is possible for a person to be angry without attacking.
In the same work Differences were found according to emotion. For sad and depressing events, the highest levels of activation (both subjective and cardiovascular) occurred when participants spoke slowly and softly. It is not that higher is better.
Noise also changes the volume of your voice.
The acoustic context must also be taken into account. There is a phenomenon called the Lombard effect. It consists of the fact that, when there is noise, we involuntarily increase our vocal effort so that they can hear us. Before we assume that someone is expressing emotion by saying something out loud, we need to consider whether they are trying to hear themselves in a noisy context.
In one experiment (published in April 2026), participants (21) produced syllables in two moments of silence and one moment of noise (80 dB). After the noise, 10 minutes were spent in rest. At moments of noise they increased voice intensity by an average of 5.2 dB. After a break, they return to levels close to their initial levels.
Picture | Pexels
