No. 247: Vocal Persuasion in Corporate Disclosure

In corporate disclosure, managers frequently attempt to persuade investors and other market participants to interpret information in a particular way. We use a mixed-method research design to examine how managers vary their vocal cues according to their persuasion goals. We first conduct semi-structured interviews with Investor Relations Officers to shed light on managers’ persuasion goals and consideration of nonverbal behavior. We then use an experiment to examine whether manager vocal cues vary when persuading investors to action versus inaction, two important goals identified in our interviews. We find that managers use lower and less variable voice pitch when attempting to persuade current investors not to sell their stocks than when persuading prospective investors to buy. Finally, we use archival audio recordings of earnings calls to provide convergent evidence for our experimental results and also find that investors respond to variation in vocal cues. Overall, our results suggest that managers strategically vary their vocal cues to influence investors.