Voice Cues Influence Children\u2019s Assessment of Adults\u2019 Occupational Competence

Valentina Cartei,David Reby,Alan Garnham,Robin Banerjee,Jane Oakhill

doi:10.1007/s10919-020-00354-y

Abstract

The adult voice is a strong bio-social marker for masculinity and femininity. In this study we investigated whether children make gender stereotypical judgments about adults’ occupational competence on the basis of their voice. Forty-eight 8- to 10- year olds were asked to rate the competence of adult voices that varied in vocal masculinity (by artificially manipulating voice pitch) and were randomly paired with 9 occupations (3 stereotypically male, 3 female, 3 gender-neutral). In line with gender stereotypes, children rated men as more competent for the male occupations and women as more competent for the female occupations. Moreover, children rated speakers of both sexes with feminine (high-pitched) voices as more competent for the female occupations. Finally, children rated men (but not women) with masculine (low-pitched) voices as more competent for stereotypically male occupations. Our results thus indicate that stereotypical voice-based judgments of occupational competence previously identified in adults are already present in children, and likely to affect how they consider adults and interact with them in their social environment.

Highlights

The human voice is one of the main sources providing first impressions of a speaker’s identity, including biological sex
Listeners judge men and women with low-frequency voices as physically bigger, stronger, more masculine, more physically and socially dominant than those with voices of relatively high-frequency voices. These associations can be partly explained in evolutionary terms, as voice pitch, at least in males, is inversely related to testosterone (Cartei et al 2020b; O’Connor et al 2011), which in turn is positively associated with a host of physiological masculine characteristics, including physical strength and body size (Bhasin et al 1996), as well as self-reported dominance (Puts et al 2006)
For the gender-neutral occupations, no significant differences were found amongst F0 variants, all ps > 0.05. This is the first study to show that children make gender-stereotypical judgments of adult speakers on the basis of speaker’s variation in vocal masculinity and femininity, complementing prior research that focused exclusively on adults

Summary

Introduction

The human voice is one of the main sources providing first impressions of a speaker’s identity, including biological sex. Listeners judge men and women with low-frequency voices as physically bigger, stronger, more masculine, more physically and socially dominant than those with voices of relatively high-frequency voices (for reviews: Hall et al 2005; Pisanski and Bryant 2019) These associations can be partly explained in evolutionary terms, as voice pitch, at least in males, is inversely related to testosterone (Cartei et al 2020b; O’Connor et al 2011), which in turn is positively associated with a host of physiological masculine characteristics, including physical strength and body size (Bhasin et al 1996), as well as self-reported dominance (Puts et al 2006). The perceived association between pitch and body size may lead to misattributions of physical strength in adults (Feinberg et al 2005; Sell et al 2010), and of sex in babies (e.g., lowpitched cries are more likely to be attributed to boys and high-pitched cries to girls, despite the absence of sex differences in the pitch of babies: Reby et al 2016)

Methods

Results

Conclusion