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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognize emotions conveyed by vocal sounds [futurity.org]—no matter if the sounds are growls of anger, peals of laughter, or cries of sadness.

Further, we pay more attention when an emotion is expressed through vocalizations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech.

The speed with which the brain “tags” vocal sounds and the preference given to them compared to language is due to the potentially crucial role that decoding vocal sounds has played in human survival, researchers say.

“The identification of emotional vocalizations depends on systems in the brain that are older in evolutionary terms,” says Marc Pell, Director of the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders at McGill University. “Understanding emotions expressed in spoken language, on the other hand, involves more recent brain systems that have evolved as human language developed.”
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The researchers found that the participants were able to detect vocalizations of happiness (i.e., laughter) more quickly than vocal sounds conveying either anger or sadness. But, interestingly, they found that angry sounds and angry speech both produced ongoing brain activity that lasted longer than either of the other emotions, suggesting that the brain pays special attention to the importance of anger signals.

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