Wired for Speech

I've just borrowed a very interesting book a few days back called "Wired for Speech - How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationships" by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave. This book basically explores how people react to voices both real and virtual people in different social circumstances. Though the book touches mainly on human/computer interaction, it does raises alot of ingrained social prejudice that is prevalent amoung lots of humans.

One of the issues that it raised was that people are generally quite evident on racial characteristics. If you have a face like a eastern asian, and have a western voice, it makes people view you in confused manner - as the conflict between the expected accent based on the facial features and the accent to be completely different. This can invoke either a suspicious, curious, or a bewildered response based on typical human behavior. Talking about it, I've noticed I belong to this category. Kind of interesting, I have to agree.