Task, being asked to select which manipulated voice-the higher or the lower one-is more attractive, stronger, younger, or more salient by some other criterion, depending on the question being studied. Most of this research is based on experiments in which participants are presented with a Using recorded voices that have been manipulated to sound higher or lower, psychologists and linguists have demonstrated that a person’s voice pitch affects how others perceive her or him. A person can adjust the pitch of his or her speaking voice to some degree, but in most cases the change is minor in comparison with the innate differences of pitch among individuals. To take an example from a different realm of life, even with extensive vocal training some low-voiced women cannot develop the ability to sing in the soprano musical range, and not all men have the physical ability to sing a bass part. This kind of training can modify voice pitch only so far, however, within the constraints of the speaker’s anatomy and physiology.
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Her biographer, Charles Moore, has suggested that learning how to modulate the pitch of her voice may have helped Thatcher accelerate her political career. The Iron Lady, is the modulation in pitch of Margaret Thatcher’s voice that resulted from the vocal training she underwent before she became prime minister of the United Kingdom. A well-known historical example, highlighted in the 2011 motion picture The considerable difference in voice pitch between men and women reflects not only the average difference in body size between the sexes, but also the fact that the size of the larynx is a secondary sexual characteristic partly controlled by testosterone this is why the male larynx-commonly referred to as the “Adam’s apple”-enlarges disproportionately with the onset of puberty.Īlthough voice pitch is mostly determined by throat anatomy, a speaker can modulate the pitch of his or her voice. Typical male voices range in pitch from 85 hertz to 180 hertz typical female voices, from 165 hertz to 255 hertz. The larger the larynx, the longer and thicker the vocal folds and the lower the pitch of the voice. The size of the vocal folds is largely determined by the size of the larynx, and their thickness is further influenced by the action of hormones such as testosterone. The specific pitch of a person’s voice reflects the fundamental frequency at which the vocal folds are vibrating and thereby imposing periodic variations in air pressure, measured in hertz, or cycles per second.Īs with the strings of a guitar or piano, when vocal folds are longer and thicker, they tend to vibrate more slowly and so produce a lower-pitched voice, whereas shorter and thinner vocal folds vibrate more quickly and thus produce a higher-pitched voice. The flow of air is modified by the vibration of the vocal folds (or vocal cords) in our larynx (or voice box), as well as by the movement and relative positions of our tongue, jaw, lips, and so forth. All sounds are the result of minute fluctuations in air pressure speech sounds in particular represent patterned fluctuations that are created when we force air through the vocal tract. Voice pitch, the perceived “highness” or “lowness” of a voice, fundamentally is an expression of physiology, not psychology. Our research explores one such context that is particularly topical in this 2016 election season: how vocal traits, specifically voice pitch, can influence our selection of leaders. What is more surprising is that subtle characteristics of speech-features of which we are hardly aware-can have a significant impact on our perceptions of a person, even in contexts where we might think these perceptions should be irrelevant. The idea that listeners are affected not just by the words we say, but also by how we say them, should come as no surprise: We all can think of instances in which the same words said with different inflections can mean very different things. Spoken language is unique to humans, and it is far more complex than the communication systems of animals such as songbirds, but we too are influenced by nonverbal aspects of speech. Both the signaler and the recipient stand to benefit from the information exchange, because both can avoid a potentially costly fight if they are not equally motivated or able to defend whatever is being contested, such as a territory, a prospective mate, or a source of food. For example, research by two of us (Anderson and Nowicki) shows that in an aggressive encounter between songbirds, the loudness of a bird’s song reliably signals the likelihood that the bird will physically attack its opponent.
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