Dr Pablo Arias
- Affiliate (School of Psychology & Neuroscience)
Research interests
I'm Pablo Arias Sarah, a Lecturer working at the University of Glasgow, in the School of Neuroscience and Psychology. I study human social interaction mechanisms using real time voice/face transformations. To do this, we developed a videoconference experimental platform called DuckSoup which enables researchers to transform participants' voice and face (e.g. increase participants' smiles or their vocal intonations) in real time during free social interactions. We use these paradigms to study social cognition (e.g. social biases, social alignment).
I hold a a PhD in cognitive science from Sorbonne University, a Master of Engineering in digital technologies and multimedia from Polytech' Nantes, and a Master of Science in acoustics, signal processing and computer science applied to sound, from IRCAM.
Research groups
- Social Communication & Interaction
- Perception, Attention & Awareness
Publications
2026
Guha, Rudradeep, Arias-Sarah, Pablo and Aucouturier, Jean-Julien (2026) The social transfer function: how dynamic predictions of facial consequences drive judgements of social contingency. Open Mind, (doi: 10.1162/OPMI.a.400) (Early Online Publication)
Nölle, Jonas, Wu, Yichen, Arias-Sarah, Pablo, Garrod, Oliver G.B., Schyns, Philippe G. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8542-7489 and Jack, Rachael E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3687-0799
(2026)
Dynamic facial movements shape how confident speakers appear.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 293(2081),
20262044.
(doi: 10.1098/rspb.2026.2044)
2024
Arias-Sarah, Pablo, Bedoya, Daniel, Daube, Christoph, Aucouturier, Jean-Julien, Hall, Lars and Johansson, Petter (2024) Aligning the smiles of dating dyads causally increases attraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(45), e240036912. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.2400369121) (PMID:39467124)
Le Moine Veillon, Clément, Rosi, Victor, Arias Sarah, Pablo, Salais, Léane and Obin, Nicolas (2024) BWSNET: automatic perceptual assessment of audio signals. In: ICASSP 2024 - 2024 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Seoul, Korea, 14-19 Apr 2024, pp. 10416-10420. ISBN 9798350344851 (doi: 10.1109/icassp48485.2024.10447014)
2023
Nakai, Tomoya, Rachman, Laura, Arias Sarah, Pablo, Okanoya, Kazuo and Aucouturier, Jean-Julien (2023) Algorithmic voice transformations reveal the phonological basis of language-familiarity effects in cross-cultural emotion judgments. PLoS ONE, 18(5), e0285028. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285028) (PMID:37134091) (PMCID:PMC10156011)
Arias Sarah, Pablo, Hall, Lars, Saitovitch, Ana, Aucouturier, Jean-Julien, Zilbovicius, Monica and Johansson, Petter (2023) Pupil dilation reflects the dynamic integration of audiovisual emotional speech. Scientific Reports, 13, 5507. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32133-2) (PMID:37016041) (PMCID:PMC10073148)
Rosi, Victor, Arias Sarah, Pablo, Houix, Olivier, Misdariis, Nicolas and Susini, Patrick (2023) Shared mental representations underlie metaphorical sound concepts. Scientific Reports, 13, 5180. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32214-2) (PMID:36997613) (PMCID:PMC10063581)
2018
Arias, Pablo, Belin, Pascal and Aucouturier, Jean-Julien (2018) Auditory smiles trigger unconscious facial imitation. Current Biology, 28(14), R782-R783. (doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.084) (PMID:30040936)
Articles
Guha, Rudradeep, Arias-Sarah, Pablo and Aucouturier, Jean-Julien (2026) The social transfer function: how dynamic predictions of facial consequences drive judgements of social contingency. Open Mind, (doi: 10.1162/OPMI.a.400) (Early Online Publication)
Nölle, Jonas, Wu, Yichen, Arias-Sarah, Pablo, Garrod, Oliver G.B., Schyns, Philippe G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8542-7489 and Jack, Rachael E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3687-0799
(2026)
Dynamic facial movements shape how confident speakers appear.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 293(2081),
20262044.
(doi: 10.1098/rspb.2026.2044)
Arias-Sarah, Pablo, Bedoya, Daniel, Daube, Christoph, Aucouturier, Jean-Julien, Hall, Lars and Johansson, Petter (2024) Aligning the smiles of dating dyads causally increases attraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 121(45), e240036912. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.2400369121) (PMID:39467124)
Nakai, Tomoya, Rachman, Laura, Arias Sarah, Pablo, Okanoya, Kazuo and Aucouturier, Jean-Julien (2023) Algorithmic voice transformations reveal the phonological basis of language-familiarity effects in cross-cultural emotion judgments. PLoS ONE, 18(5), e0285028. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285028) (PMID:37134091) (PMCID:PMC10156011)
Arias Sarah, Pablo, Hall, Lars, Saitovitch, Ana, Aucouturier, Jean-Julien, Zilbovicius, Monica and Johansson, Petter (2023) Pupil dilation reflects the dynamic integration of audiovisual emotional speech. Scientific Reports, 13, 5507. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32133-2) (PMID:37016041) (PMCID:PMC10073148)
Rosi, Victor, Arias Sarah, Pablo, Houix, Olivier, Misdariis, Nicolas and Susini, Patrick (2023) Shared mental representations underlie metaphorical sound concepts. Scientific Reports, 13, 5180. (doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32214-2) (PMID:36997613) (PMCID:PMC10063581)
Arias, Pablo, Belin, Pascal and Aucouturier, Jean-Julien (2018) Auditory smiles trigger unconscious facial imitation. Current Biology, 28(14), R782-R783. (doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.084) (PMID:30040936)
Conference Proceedings
Le Moine Veillon, Clément, Rosi, Victor, Arias Sarah, Pablo, Salais, Léane and Obin, Nicolas (2024) BWSNET: automatic perceptual assessment of audio signals. In: ICASSP 2024 - 2024 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Seoul, Korea, 14-19 Apr 2024, pp. 10416-10420. ISBN 9798350344851 (doi: 10.1109/icassp48485.2024.10447014)
