From the archives: It’s about now that we well and truly start abandoning New Year resolutions, if we haven’t already given up on losing weight and getting fitter, budgeting better or asking for that raise or promotion. But the urge to find love is one resolution some are unlikely to have given up on quite so quickly. Might deepening your voice help with the hunt for a mate? In this story from the Listener’s archives, Marc Wilson explains why.
Back in 2005, Justin Timberlake sought vocal training to deepen his voice as he transitioned from a music-focused to music-and-movies career. Why? JT is and was lauded for his singing, and the many posters of him (and his NSYNC buddies) on adolescents’ bedroom walls suggest he was perceived positively.
Clearly, then, JT wasn’t trying to change his singing voice, but wanted to broaden his appeal as an actor. So, let’s assume there’s something desirable about a deep(er) voice, but that it may depend on context.
We know humans have a tendency to judge books by their covers and make quick judgments about likeability or competence on the basis of what a person looks like, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that voice is also important in how we make social judgments. Over the past 20 years, researchers have shown evidence for what we intuitively know. A political candidate with a deeper vocal pitch will have an advantage over a slightly squeakier opponent, and companies with deep-voiced chief executives not only have millions more in assets than other corporates, but also pay those executives more. At the same time, people raise their vocal pitch when talking to someone with more status.
Mate selection (who we fancy and make babies with) is also, predictably, associated with vocal characteristics. Among men, a deep voice typically signals more testosterone, so maybe women see deep-voiced males as more “grrr”. Until I sat down to write this, I didn’t know that women’s voices increase in pitch when they are at their most fertile. Although this might lead us to predict that women with higher voices should be seen as more desirable, that may not be the case.
In speed-dating experiments, men tend to prefer women with deeper voices, and men and women deepen their voices when they’re chatting to someone they fancy. Perhaps this is a sociocultural phenomenon – that is to say, the stereotypical blonde doesn’t have a deep voice, so perhaps we’ve trained ourselves to discount this evolved cue.
In fact, we know the types of characteristics people attribute to those with deep voices: dominance, reliability and emotional stability. A squeakier voice, though, is perceived as more nervy and neurotic, and more disagreeable.
So, we tend to prefer people (men and women) with deeper voices, and we perceive them as more dominant and stable. But does this mean there’s a bestseller under the cover? Do vocal characteristics reliably reflect something about a person’s personality?
In a recent study, Julia Stern from the University of Göttingen, Germany, and some of her colleagues recorded several thousand people saying a set of standardised words and phrases, then looked at patterns between their vocal characteristics and their scores on a variety of personality questionnaires.
The punchline? People (men and women) with deeper voices described themselves as more dominant than their higher-pitched peers. They also said they were more extroverted and they reported more, ahem, “unrestricted sociosexual behaviour”. This means more sexual partners, and a more liberal attitude to sex in general. Perhaps this explains the speed-dating studies that find men and women deepen their voices when chatting someone up.
People with deeper voices also scored higher on measures of emotional stability and openness to experience, but there was no relationship between vocal pitch and conscientiousness and reliability. Don’t vote for someone with a deeper voice because you think they’re going to be a more reliable hand in government.
Back to Timberlake. According to news reports at the time, he was told by film executives that his “high-pitched voice wasn’t right for the big screen”. So, clearly we do judge albums by their covers – and the cover is often right.
It’s also the case that although “fertile” women prefer deep-voiced males, mothers prefer a lighter pitch. Perhaps it’s all about who you’re trying to appeal to.
This story was originally published in the May 8–24, 2021 issue of the New Zealand Listener.
