Background: Social anxiety has been found to influence certain characteristics of the voice during various structured speaking tasks, but its assessment in more naturalistic contexts is scarce....Show moreBackground: Social anxiety has been found to influence certain characteristics of the voice during various structured speaking tasks, but its assessment in more naturalistic contexts is scarce. When directly looked at, socially anxious individuals feel more intimidated compared to when their social partner averts their eye gaze. The primary aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between social anxiety and five vocal characteristics (including mean voice intensity, mean fundamental frequency, rate, pausing, and speech duration) during a face-to-face conversation. A secondary aim was to examine the moderating effect of a social partner’s gaze direction (direct vs. averted gaze) on this relationship. Methods: Fifty-two university students (M = 21.27 years old, 86.5% female) participated in a face-to-face conversation task with a same-sex confederate. Both the participants and the confederates were given four question cards which they were asked to answer interchangeably. The confederates’ cards also included instructions about gaze direction without the participants knowing. Throughout the conversation task, participants’ voices were recorded using high-quality wearable eye-trackers. Results: The analyses revealed that neither social anxiety nor social partner gaze direction affected vocal characteristics during the conversation task. Conclusion: Increased mean fundamental frequency and degree of pausing and decreased mean voice intensity, speech rate, and duration were not identified as potential physiological indicators of social anxiety. Though translating such findings into real-life social interactions proved to be a difficult venture, future researchers could further investigate this topic with the hope of better clarifying the relationship between social anxiety and atypical voice patterns, as well as the moderating effect of confederate gaze direction on the speech patterns of more or less socially anxious individuals.Show less