As a voice actor, I’m always looking to improve my craft. Whether I’m doing promo, commercial, or any type of narration voice over, I’m always thinking about how I can connect with the audience and communicate a message as effectively as possible.
Throughout my experience in the voice over industry, I’ve realized that psychology plays a big role – both for me, in terms of how well I can deliver the performance I’m aiming for, and for the audience, in terms of how receptive they are to the voice over. In this blog post, I’d like to discuss the psychology of voice over, and how voice talent can use this information to better reach their listeners.
I’ll be using promo voice over as an example throughout the post. Promo voice over aims to accomplish many of the same goals as other kinds of voice over, including grabbing the audience’s attention, getting them excited about the topic at hand, and motivating them to take a specific action (in this case, to watch the show or broadcast that’s being promoted).
But an important difference is that promos are typically very short, and therefore the promo voice actor needs to expertly use every single word in order to achieve the desired effect on the audience. By discussing the psychology of voice over through the lens of promo, I hope to provide helpful information for voice actors working in any genre.
How can knowing some psychology help talent perform their voice overs?
Anticipating an audience’s reaction is the key to successfully delivering the message. As a voice actor, it’s important to understand how different styles of speech might affect a listener’s thoughts and feelings. Based on the goals of the project, the voice over must then be shaped to try to produce a specific response. For example, in promo voice over, the goal is to get the listener to tune in to an upcoming show, and therefore the voice over needs to be persuasive.
How can a voice actor craft their voice to make the desired impact on an audience? Here are some tips based on current psychology and neuroscience research:
(1) Know that your audience’s initial reaction will be based on deep-seated survival instincts:
Humans are highly social creatures, and for good reason. Collaborating with one another promotes our own survival and the survival of our community. Verbal communication is an integral part of this. Our brains are wired to quickly assess if a new voice we hear is coming from a trustworthy friend, or a competitive foe. If the goal of a voice over is to get the audience on board with an idea, or to motivate them to take an action, then the voice actor may need to immediately establish themselves as a friendly and trusted source of information. This can be achieved in different ways, for example using a warm, helpful, or even familial sounding voice, or by using a strong, confident, and perhaps authoritative voice.
(2) If you want your audience to feel a certain way, create that emotion in yourself:
As human beings, we have a profound ability to empathize, and knowing this can help voice actors prompt the desired emotions in their audience. The neuroscience of empathy has revealed that when we observe someone else taking an action, or experiencing a feeling such as pain, our own brain cells that control those same actions or emotions become activated. Studies conducted by Christian Keysers of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience suggest that this ‘mirror activity’ in our brains promotes the ability to step into someone else’s shoes, and live vicariously through them.
What this means for a voice actor is that, embodying an emotion or believing an idea, and conveying this through their voice can cause a listener to feel or think the same. Let’s revisit the example of promo. A promo voice actor may want to get their audience intrigued about an upcoming broadcast. An effective way to do this may be to genuinely feel intrigued themselves, and then allow their voice to reflect the way they feel. Listeners will be able to pick up on the emotions they hear in the voice over, maximizing the chances that they too will feel those emotions.
(3) Imagine that you are telling a story:
Whether the voice over script involves explicitly telling a story or not, it may help to imagine the narrative of the script as somewhat like a story. Maybe a problem is being stated, which represents the conflict, and the solution is to buy the product (or take another action), which offers the resolution. Performing the voice over with a story-like structure in mind can promote interest in the audience and keep them engaged. But more than that, this strategy can also help voice actors connect with their audience.
Studies by Uri Hasson, a neurobiologist at Princeton University, show that prior to listening to a story, people start out with very different brain activity in certain regions as measured by fMRI scanning. However, once they start hearing a story, these same people start to have matching brain activity in those regions. And what’s more – when the storyteller’s brain is scanned, it turns out their brain activity also matches the listeners’ brain activity. So when you tell a story, your listeners might adopt the same brain state as yours, facilitating a connection between you.
As our understanding of the human mind advances, voice over actors may want to pay attention. What we learn about human psychology may prove very helpful in the pursuit of greater success in voice over.
