Abstract
Whereas voice pitch is strongly linked to people's perceptions in contexts of sexual selection, such as attractiveness and dominance, evidence that links voice pitch to actual behaviour or the formidability of a speaker is sparse and mixed. In this registered report, we investigated how male speakers' voice pitch is linked to fighting success in a dataset comprising 135 (amateur) mixed martial arts and 189 (amateur) boxing fights. Based on the assumption that voice pitch is an honest signal of formidability, we expected lower voice pitch to be linked to higher fighting success. The results indicated no significant relation between a fighter's voice pitch, as directly measured before a fight, and successive fighting success in both mixed martial arts fighters and boxers.
Highlights
Social media summary: We found no relation between voice pitch and fighting success in a dataset comprising 324 boxing and mixed martial arts fights
To provide a well-powered test of a potential relation between F0 and formidability, we ran a study including data for 135 amateur mixed martial arts (MMA) fights and 189 amateur boxing fights. This deepens our insights into how F0 is related to actual formidability, and provides a rather direct test of the relation, given that dyadic fight data is available and it can be tested whether the difference in F0 between fighters can predict the outcome of a fight
In a dataset comprising 135 MMA fights and 189 boxing fights we found no significant link between male fighters’ F0 and successive fighting success
Summary
Social media summary: We found no relation between voice pitch and fighting success in a dataset comprising 324 boxing and mixed martial arts fights. Male individuals with lower F0 are taller (Pisanski et al, 2014) and stronger (Aung & Puts, 2019) and have higher testosterone levels (Aung & Puts, 2019) These relations are relatively weak (rheight/F0 = −0.13, rstrength/F0 = −0.07 and rtestosterone/F0 = −0.20; meta-analytic references above) and – for strength and testosterone – based on a relatively small number of studies (kstrength/F0 = 13, ktestosterone/F0 = 8) with relatively small sample sizes (mean Nstrength/F0 = 65.00, mean Ntestosterone/F0 = 95.38). Strength and height are rather indirect proxies for formidability, While previous research suggests that (masculine) facial cues predict fighting success in male but not female MMA fighters (Little et al, 2015; Palmer-Hague et al, 2016; Zilioli et al, 2015), mixed findings exist regarding links between F0 and fighting ability. On average, fighters with lower F0 are more likely to win their fights
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