Some People May Sound Angrier When Complaining, Study Finds

We often communicate emotions through our voice — shifts in tone, pitch, and rhythm can reveal what we’re feeling, even when we don’t say it outright. But what emotions are most commonly expressed through complaints, and do these emotional cues vary across cultures? A new study by researchers in Switzerland and Canada, published in Frontiers in Communication, explores how people vocally express complaints — and how these expressions differ between French and Québécois speakers.

“Complaining is differentiated from neutral speech by changes in vocal expression. Complainers tend to change their intonation, pitch, rhythm, and emphasis, making them sound more emotive and expressive,”
— Dr. Maël Mauchand, first author of the study and neuroscientist at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva.
“We show that complaining strategies show specific variations across two francophone cultures, with Québécois sounding more angry or surprised and French speakers sounding sadder.”

How Complaints Were Studied

To investigate the emotional content of complaints, the research team asked eight speakers — four from France and four from Quebec — to record 84 short sentences. Each sentence was spoken once in a neutral tone and once as a complaint. Importantly, the words themselves remained constant across both versions, allowing researchers to focus solely on vocal expression.

These recordings were then evaluated by 40 listeners based in Quebec, half of whom had grown up in France. Participants were asked to identify which emotions (such as happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, or disgust) were conveyed in each utterance.

“Complaining strategies seem consistent towards defining a general ‘complaining tone of voice’, with a few specific cultural variations,”
— Mauchand explained.

The findings revealed that complaints were generally spoken with a higher and more variable pitch, and were typically louder and slower compared to neutral speech. However, cultural differences emerged: French speakers tended to speak at a higher pitch, while Québécois speakers showed greater pitch variability — suggesting a more dynamic intonation.

Sadness or Anger? Cultural Cues in Complaints

Complaints often serve to reconstruct emotional experiences, helping speakers relive or communicate a negative situation. Naturally, this means complaints are emotionally charged. But the type of emotion conveyed varied across the two groups.

Listeners rated Québécois complaints as sounding angrier, more surprised, and more disgusted. In contrast, French speakers were often perceived as sounding sadder.

“There may be cultural norms on what a complaint sounds like in France or in Quebec, influenced by their use,”
— Mauchand noted.
“The French are said to complain quite often – if complaining is frequent and ritualized, it makes sense that complainers try to make their voice sound less aggressive, for example by using higher intonation and sounding more sad than angry.”

In contrast, the Québécois are known to be more expressive in their speech. This could explain why high-arousal emotions such as anger and surprise were more frequently perceived in their complaints.

“There may be social conventions on what a complaint sounds like in a particular culture, which can be learned as we grow up,”
— Mauchand added.
“How we complain is a subtle interplay between emotion, social context, and cultural display rules.”

Implications and Next Steps

While the study offers compelling insights into how cultural background shapes the sound of complaints, the researchers acknowledge some limitations. The small sample size and focus on just two francophone cultures may restrict how widely the findings can be generalized. Moreover, complaints in real-life conversations may take different forms and evolve over longer interactions.

Future research could explore whether similar emotional variations in complaints appear among speakers of the same language raised in different cultures. Such studies could deepen understanding of how frequently and in what manner people complain — and how others interpret these expressions.

Beyond cultural insights, the findings underscore the vital role of tone in social communication. They could have applications in therapy, communication training, and the study of disorders that affect social understanding.

“As an immediate application, it could encourage people to be more attentive,”
— Mauchand concluded.
“Not just to what people say, but how they say it – and what it implies.”

Original Publication
Authors: Maël Mauchand and Marc D. Pell.
Journal: Frontiers in Communication
DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1592994
Method of Research: Experimental study
Subject of Research: People
Article Title: The Sound of Complaints
Article Publication Date: 22-Jul-2025
COI Statement: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.