the pitch

“‘It was quite well known that [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher had gone through extensive voice coaching to exude a more authoritative, powerful persona,’ explains [lead researcher Sei Jin] Ko [of San Diego State University]. ‘We wanted to explore how something so fundamental as power might elicit changes in the way a voice sounds, and how these situational vocal changes impact the way listeners perceive and behave toward the speakers.’ Ko, along with Melody Sadler of San Diego State and Adam Galinsky of Columbia Business School, designed two studies to find out.
     In the first experiment, they recorded 161 college students reading a passage aloud; this first recording captured baseline acoustics. The participants were then randomly assigned to play a specific role in an ensuing negotiation exercise.
     Students assigned to a ‘high’ rank were told to go into the negotiation imagining that they either had a strong alternative offer, valuable inside information, or high status in the workplace, or they were asked to recall an experience in which they had power before the negotiation started. Low-rank students, on the other hand, were told to imagine they had either a weak offer, no inside information, or low workplace status, or they were asked to recall an experience in which they lacked power.
     The students then read a second passage aloud, as if they were leading off negotiations with their imaginary adversary, and their voices were recorded. Everyone read the same opening, allowing the researchers to examine acoustics while holding the speech content constant across all participants.
     Comparing the first and second recordings, the researchers found that the voices of students assigned to high-power roles tended to go up in pitch, become more monotone (less variable in pitch), and become more variable in loudness than the voices of students assigned low-power roles.”
— Association for Psychological Science
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Photo: moole.ru

“Just as symmetry and scent are important yet subtle indicators of genetic fitness, a person’s voice can also give clues to his reproductive ability. For instance, it’s no myth that good looking men often have deep voices. A study done at Northumbria University in the UK recorded men speaking and had both men and women rate their voices based on attractiveness, dominance, confidence, and sexiness. The listeners then looked at photos of the men and rated them. Researchers found that men with deep voices were rated higher than those with high voices and the deep voices also corresponded to more attractive faces. […]
     Research has also shown that listeners can detect people’s socioeconomic status, personality, and emotional/mental state from their voice, and that they can estimate age, height, and weight about as accurately from voice clips as they can from photographs.”
— the Frisky
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