Abstract
This study reports on male and female Californians' ratings of vocal attractiveness for 30 male and 30 female voices reading isolated words. While ratings by both sexes were highly correlated, males generally rated fellow males as less attractive than females did, but both females and males had similar ratings of female voices. Detailed acoustic analyses of multiple parameters followed by principal component analyses on vowel and voice quality measures were conducted. Relevant principal components, along with additional independent acoustic measures, were entered into regression models to assess which acoustic properties predict attractiveness ratings. These models suggest that a constellation of acoustic features which indicate apparent talker size and conformity to community speech norms contribute to perceived vocal attractiveness. These results suggest that judgments of vocal attractiveness are more complex than previously described.
Highlights
The voice is a rich source of information for listeners
We suggest that more attractive ratings for female voices with more fronted productions of /u/ is a preference for talkers who exhibit patterns similar to one’s own speech; this is akin to the recurrent finding that perceivers have a preference for average faces [62]
Our study expands on previous findings by demonstrating that acoustic-phonetic features relating to sexual dimorphism, apparent health and youthfulness, and community-based typicality collectively contribute to listeners’ perception of vocal attractiveness
Summary
The voice is a rich source of information for listeners. In addition to functioning as the medium of communication in oral language, in its non-linguistic role, the human voice has the ability to convey biological information like sex (e.g., [1]) and age (e.g. [2]); physiological details such as height and weight for men [3]; social classifications such as race [4]; and emotional states [5]. The attractiveness of a particular voice is potentially related to a number of these talker-specific physical and social assessments. Previous work on vocal attractiveness has used a small selection of acoustic-phonetic measures that are related to vocal tract size to predict listeners’ judgments of attractive voices. We employ a larger range of phonetic measures related to both the apparent size of talkers’ laryngeal source and supralaryngeal cavity, and non-physiological stylistic aspects of spoken language measurable from the signal to study the subjective vocal attractiveness ratings of sixty talkers. Rather than physical, attractiveness, this theory is supported by a body of research linking vocal traits to human sexuality and dimorphism. Vocal attractiveness is an important social evaluation that goes beyond mate selection and sexual behavior. Judgments of attractiveness are important in everyday interaction as physically attractive people are judged to be more socially desirable and to get better jobs [18], in addition to being more persuasive [19]
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