Sexuality and personality: The effect of pitch height and contour width on perception in Japanese.

Abstract

This work investigates how Japanese listeners judge a speaker’s personality characteristics and sexual orientation. Base sentences, produced in Japanese by a male and a female native Japanese speaker, were resynthesized to manipulate specific acoustic characteristics believed to influence perceived sexual orientation or personality. Overall, the higher the fundamental frequency (f0) of the female voice, the less likely it was to be perceived as lesbian. Similarly, the flatter the intonation pattern of the female voice, the more likely it was to be viewed as lesbian. For male voices, the higher the f0, the more likely the voice would be perceived as gay. Pitch variability did not play a significant role in this perception. Finally, out of the four personality scales investigated, two showed a significant correlation to lesbian voices: masculinity and calmness. Male voices showed the same pattern, with gay voices correlating with femininity and emotionality. The influence of the sex of the listener was also...