Once again the pitch
of peoples voices is the subject of a research project. This time the pitch has
been progressively manipulated over a wide range to see how people respond.
Previous work has already established how the pitch of a voice is perceived in
terms of authority – a lower pitch carries more weight than a higher pitch, but
what do we find attractive?
Re
at al from McMaster U have decided to
let us in on their results from a study with 10 male and 9 female students (1).
The students listened to the pronunciation of simple vowels sounds that were
electronically manipulated over 2 Hz steps from very low pitches to very high
pitches. The full human range was investigated.
But
what question was asked? What did their 19 human lab rats prefer for male and
female voices. Note: the men weren’t asked to rate the men’s voices and the
women didn’t have to worry about the women’s voices. The choice was the
preferred pitch of the opposite sex.
The
results? The men preferred women’s voices at the high end of the pitch range.
Now, for the women the preferred frequency for men’s voices was a low frequency, but not too low,
certainly not at the extreme.
I’m
left wondering what this means. Does an extremely low male voice sound too
authoritative for a rebellious student? Maybe. And why would the guys prefer an
extremely high-pitched women’s voice? What’s happened to the attraction of the
husky woman’s voice whispering in the ear? Are the winters in Ontario to cold
to think of such things? I doubt it. There must be some other explanation at
work for such an odd result.
