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Cited by 25Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentAttachment and Relationship DynamicsMotivation and Self-Concept in Sports

Listen to your mother: Motivating tones of voice predict adolescents’ reactions to mothers.

Weinstein, Netta, Vansteenkiste, Maarten, Paulmann, Silke·2019·Developmental Psychology
DOI 10.1037/dev0000827
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Abstract

Virtually nothing is known about the role that tone of voice may play in motivating interactions. Herein, we use an experimental approach to explore for the first time how the same directive instructions ("Do well at the play") have different effects on adolescents depending on the motivational tone of voice used to convey these instructions. A sample of 1,000 adolescents aged 14-15 years was randomly assigned to hearing semantically identical messages that were expressed by mothers of adolescents with controlling, autonomy-supportive, or neutral tones of voice. Results suggest that the way speakers modulated their voice when intoning the same verbal messages affected adolescents' emotional, relational, and behavioral intention responses. Listening to mothers making motivating statements in an autonomy-supportive, relative to a neutral, tone of voice elicited more positive and less negative emotions, increased closeness, and intentional behavioral engagement among adolescents, while the opposite set of findings emerged when adolescents listened to mothers making motivational statements in a controlling tone of voice. These findings elucidate how mothers' spoken communications can impact adolescents, with implications for the quality of parent-child relationships, adolescents' well-being, and engagement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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  • In laboratory studies with adult participants, listening to controlling voices increased anticipated defiance to requests and decreased intended cooperation, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for autonomy-supportive sounding voices.

    “In laboratory studies with adult participants, listening to controlling voices increased anticipated defiance to requests and decreased intended cooperation, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for autonomy‐supportive sounding voices (Weinstein et al., 2019).”

    From Teachers' motivational prosody: A pre‐registered experimental test of children's reactions to tone of voice used by teachers (2023) · cites this paper as Weinstein et al., 2019

    The section ‘Are all Motivational Tones of Voice Created Equal? Their Relation with Engagement’ reports that autonomy-supportive tones increased cooperation and controlling tones reduced it. But the Participants and Procedure sections describe an online experiment with 14- and 15-year-olds, not laboratory studies with adults. The Materials section also says defiance and cooperation were combined into one relative-cooperativeness score, so the claimed separate increase in anticipated defiance is not established by the passages reviewed. Page numbers were not available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.90)

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Weinstein, N., Vansteenkiste, M., & Paulmann, S.
Affiliations
  • Cardiff University (GB)
  • University of Essex (GB)
Corresponding author
Weinstein, Netta
ORCID
Venue
Developmental Psychology
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
2019-12
Volume
55
Issue
12
Pages
2534-2546
ISSN
  • 0012-1649 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-0599
DOI
10.1037/dev0000827
OpenAlex
W2975811834
Cited by
25
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1
FWCI
2.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Developmental Psychology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (acceptedVersion)
  • Open Access at Essex (University of Essex) (acceptedVersion)
  • ORCA Online Research @Cardiff (Cardiff University) (submittedVersion)
Funders
Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2013-169)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports
Keywords
tone of voice, parental communication, parental autonomy support, controlling parenting, adolescents, parent-child relationship, emotional responses, relationship closeness, behavioral engagement, motivational messages, youth welfare
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Auditory Perception, Communication, Female, Humans, Male, Mother-Child Relations, Mothers, Motivation, Voice

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