Abstract
Acoustic analysis and playback studies have greatly advanced our understanding of between-individual differences in nonverbal communication. Yet, researchers have only recently begun to investigate within-individual variation in the voice, particularly how people modulate key vocal parameters across various social contexts, with most of this research focusing on mating contexts. Here, we investigated whether men and women modulate the frequency components of their voices in a professional context, and how this voice modulation affects listeners’ assessments of the speakers’ competence and authority. Research assistants engaged scientists working as faculty members at various universities in two types of speech conditions: (1) Control speech, wherein the subjects were asked how to get to the administrative offices on that given campus; and (2) Authority speech, wherein the same subjects were asked to provide commentary for a radio program for young scholars titled, “How to become a scientist, and is it worth it?”. Our results show that male (n = 27) and female (n = 24) faculty members lowered their mean voice pitch (measured as fundamental frequency, F0) and vocal tract resonances (measured as formant position, Pf) when asked to provide their expert opinion compared to when giving directions. Notably, women lowered their mean voice pitch more than did men (by 33 Hz vs. 14 Hz) when giving expert advice. The results of a playback experiment further indicated that foreign-speaking listeners judged the voices of faculty members as relatively more competent and more authoritative based on authority speech than control speech, indicating that the observed nonverbal voice modulation effectively altered listeners’ perceptions. Our results support the prediction that people modulate their voices in social contexts in ways that are likely to elicit favorable social appraisals.
Highlights
Nonhuman animals have long been known to communicate dominance and aggression through their vocalizations (Morton 1977)
Voice stimuli were derived from Study 1 and included voice clips taken from the authority and control speech conditions of each recorded faculty member
Voice researchers have only recently begun to investigate whether people modulate nonverbal parameters of their voices in various social contexts, and this research has focused almost exclusively on mating contexts (Fraccaro et al 2011; Hughes et al 2010, 2014; Leongómez et al 2014; Pisanski et al 2018; Puts et al 2006)
Summary
Nonhuman animals have long been known to communicate dominance and aggression through their vocalizations (Morton 1977). In addition to associating low-frequency voices with greater physical size, strength, masculinity, and dominance (reviewed in Pisanski and Bryant 2019), listeners often associate low voice pitch with positive psychological traits such as competence and intelligence (Kreiman and Sidtis 2011 for review; cf Hughes et al 2014) These vocal stereotypes can have real-life implications affecting, for instance, who people prefer to vote for in a political election (Gregory Jr. and Gallagher 2002; Klofstad et al 2015; Tigue et al 2012) or to hire following a job interview (Schroeder and Epley 2015). The present study was designed to test (a) whether professional men and women alter their voice frequencies when speaking authoritatively about a topic on which they have specific expertise compared to when informally answering a commonknowledge question; (b) whether listeners judge the voices of these men and women as more competent and authoritative when giving expert advice than in the control condition; and (c) whether the production or perception of voice modulation differs for male versus female speakers
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