Cross-cultural studies of emotion recognition in nonverbal vocalizations not only support the universality hypothesis for its innate features, but also an in-group advantage for culture-dependent features. Nevertheless, in such studies, differences in socio-economic-educational status have not always been accounted for, with idiomatic translation of emotional concepts being a limitation, and the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms still un-researched. We set out to investigate whether native residents from Guinea-Bissau (West African culture) and Portugal (Western European culture)—matched for socio-economic-educational status, sex and language—varied in behavioural and autonomic system response during emotion recognition of nonverbal vocalizations from Portuguese individuals. Overall, Guinea–Bissauans (as out-group) responded significantly less accurately (corrected p < .05), slower, and showed a trend for higher concomitant skin conductance, compared to Portuguese (as in-group)—findings which may indicate a higher cognitive effort stemming from higher difficulty in discerning emotions from another culture. Specifically, accuracy differences were particularly found for pleasure, amusement, and anger, rather than for sadness, relief or fear. Nevertheless, both cultures recognized all emotions above-chance level. The perceived authenticity, measured for the first time in nonverbal cross-cultural research, in the same vocalizations, retrieved no difference between cultures in accuracy, but still a slower response from the out-group. Lastly, we provide—to our knowledge—a first account of how skin conductance response varies between nonverbally vocalized emotions, with significant differences (p < .05). In sum, we provide behavioural and psychophysiological data, demographically and language-matched, that supports cultural and emotion effects on vocal emotion recognition and perceived authenticity, as well as the universality hypothesis.

非语言发声中情绪识别的跨文化研究不仅支持其先天特征的普遍性假设，而且还支持文化依赖特征的组内优势。然而，在这些研究中，社会经济教育地位的差异并不总是被解释，情感概念的惯用翻译是一个限制，潜在的心理生理机制仍未研究。我们着手调查来自几内亚比绍（西非文化）和葡萄牙（西欧文化）的当地居民——在社会经济教育地位、性别和语言方面——在非语言情绪识别过程中的行为和自主系统反应是否不同来自葡萄牙人的声音。全面的，p < .05)，较慢，并显示出与葡萄牙语（作为组内）相比更高的伴随皮肤电导率的趋势 - 发现可能表明更高的认知努力源于从另一种文化中辨别情绪的更高难度。具体来说，在快乐、娱乐和愤怒方面的准确性差异尤其明显，而不是在悲伤、解脱或恐惧方面。然而，两种文化都承认所有高于机会水平的情绪。在非语言跨文化研究中首次在相同的发声中测量感知的真实性，在准确度上没有发现文化之间的差异，但外群体的反应仍然较慢。最后，据我们所知，我们提供了关于皮肤电导反应如何在非语言发出的情绪之间变化的第一个说明，具有显着差异（p  < .05)。总之，我们提供了人口统计和语言匹配的行为和心理生理数据，支持文化和情感对声音情感识别和感知真实性的影响，以及普遍性假设。