Voice pitch: a window into the communication of social power

doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.028

Current Opinion in Psychology

Volume 33, June 2020, Pages 154-161

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.028 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Low voice pitch conveys impressions related to social power.
•
We consider why sex differences in voice pitch evolved in humans and other primates.
•
Evidence suggests that men’s voice pitch signals status, condition, or formidability.
•
Our meta-analyses link men’s voice pitch to testosterone and strength.
•
We discuss why voice pitch appears to modestly correlate with size and strength.

Pitch is the most perceptually salient acoustic property of the voice and influences perceptions of characteristics related to social power, such as dominance and leadership abilities. Voice pitch is also highly sexually differentiated; men vocalize approximately one octave below women. We consider the evolution of this sex difference, and how this sheds light on the human tendency to defer to individuals with lower voice pitch. We present new meta-analyses linking lower pitch to higher testosterone (total n = 763) and upper-body strength (total n = 845) and review other recent evidence linking voice pitch to power. We find that these relationships are typically modest and consider why voice pitch has comparatively larger effects on power-related perceptions, such as perceived size and dominance, in laboratory studies. Although more data are needed, we conclude that voice pitch is likely to be an honest signal associated with success in status and contest competition.

Introduction

Pitch is the most perceptually salient acoustic property of the voice [1] and is intimately connected to social power – that is, control over others’ valued outcomes [2]. Yet, the various ways by which voice pitch influences, and is influenced by, social interactions are frequently outside our conscious awareness. Studying these relationships thus offers a unique window into how social power is communicated, as well as shedding light on key aspects of human evolution – in particular, those related to competition for status and mates.

We examine how voice pitch influences perceptions of the speaker’s power and explore the social and reproductive consequences. Next, we consider how these processes may have influenced the evolution of low voice pitch in males of many primate species, including humans. Finally, we consider why we defer to individuals with lower voice pitch. We evaluate the recent idea that low male pitch is a purely deceptive exaggeration of size [3^•] and review evidence for the alternative hypothesis that pitch honestly signals status, formidability, and/or underlying condition.

Section snippets

Power and voice pitch

Voice pitch is determined primarily by the vibratory rate of the vocal folds: skeletal muscle covered by the gel-like lamina propria and epithelium, stretched anteroposteriorly across the larynx. During phonation, air forced between the bilaterally paired vocal folds causes them to vibrate. Longer vocal folds with less muscular tension on them vibrate at a lower fundamental frequency (f_o), which we perceive as lower pitch [1]. In males, the pubertal rise in testosterone causes the vocal folds

Sexual selection and sexual dimorphism in f_o

Many of these observations were predicted from the idea that human voice pitch has been shaped by sexual selection, the type of natural selection engendered by competition for mates. In most animal species, including humans, the ability to acquire mates is more strongly linked to male reproductive success than female reproductive success [20]. In these species, males therefore tend to experience stronger sexual selection and possess traits that function in winning mates. In many anthropoid

Is f_o an honest signal?

The forgoing discussion highlights one of the most interesting unresolved questions surrounding the human voice: what information does voice pitch convey? Because of the strong associations between f_o and both sex and male physical maturation, f_o provides abundant information about components of power, for example, explaining over 60% of the variation in physical strength in a sample of young men and women (Figure 1a) and over 70% of the variation in upper-body strength among peripubertal male

Conclusions

Voice pitch, measured by f_o, strongly influences perceptions related to power in controlled laboratory studies and modestly predicts these perceptions in information-rich naturalistic contexts. These perceptual effects appear to have real-world consequences in terms of social status, leadership, mating, and reproductive success. Ancestral male catarrhine primates appear to have leveraged a perceptual association of low f_o with size to exaggerate their own apparent size to competitors and

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

Funding

The authors report no funding source for this work.

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

We thank Marco Del Giudice and Drew Rendall for valuable comments on a previous draft of this paper.

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View full text

Voice pitch: a window into the communication of social power

Highlights

Introduction

Section snippets

Power and voice pitch

Sexual selection and sexual dimorphism in fo

Is fo an honest signal?

Conclusions

Conflict of interest statement

Funding

References and recommended reading

Acknowledgements

Trends Ecol Evol

Proc R Soc B Biol Sci

Perception

Arch Sex Behav

PLoS One

Polit Psychol

Sci Adv

Evol Hum Behav

Evol Hum Behav

Evol Hum Behav

PLoS One

J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform

J Theor Biol

Trends Ecol Evol

Nature

Evol Hum Behav

Endocr Rev

J Biol Chem

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

Gen Comp Endocrinol

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Nutr Rev

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

J Nonverbal Behav

J Stat Soft

Behav Ecol

Principles of Voice Production

Social power

Changes in the male voice at puberty: vocal fold length and its relationship to the fundamental frequency of the voice

J Laryngol Otol

Seven and up: individual differences in male voice fundamental frequency emerge before puberty and remain stable throughout adulthood

R Soc Open Sci

Age- and sex-related variations in vocal-tract morphology and voice acoustics during adolescence

Horm Behav

Manipulations of fundamental and formant frequencies influence the attractiveness of human male voices

Anim Behav

A domain-specific opposite-sex bias in human preferences for manipulated voice pitch

Anim Behav

Dominance and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in human voice pitch

Evol Hum Behav

Female voice frequency in the context of dominance and attractiveness perception

Anim Behav

Sexual selection and sexual dimorphism in f_o

Is f_o an honest signal?