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image of Good and evil in the voices of fictional characters
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Abstract

Abstract

This article examines whether audiences ascribe moral qualities to fictional characters based on the sound of their voices. We first review psychological and sociocultural mechanisms whereby a character’s voice may be heard as morally diagnostic. Presented next is an online perception study in which 250 participants rated the moral qualities of 22 fictional characters following brief exposure to their voices. The voice clips, all of which were performed by the same professional voice actor, were extracted from “actual-play” sessions of . Participants came mainly from Europe and North America and had different degrees of familiarity with the fictional source materials. Our results indicated general agreement among participants in their assignment of moral qualities to the different characters. While characters with clear, resonant, and otherwise unexceptionable voices were perceived as mostly good, characters with harsh, whispery, and otherwise “othering” voices were often perceived as evil.

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/content/journals/10.1075/jlpop.24025.kje
2025-05-16
2025-06-24

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/content/journals/10.1075/jlpop.24025.kje
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Good and evil in the voices of fictional characters
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/jlpop.24025.kje
/content/journals/10.1075/jlpop.24025.kje
/content/journals/10.1075/jlpop.24025.kje
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: gaming ; ludolinguistics ; Dungeons & Dragons ; morality ; voice quality
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