Paul J Fraccaro

Publications (10) View all

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  Available from: Paul J Fraccaro

  Article: Faking it: deliberately altered voice pitch and vocal attractiveness

  Paul J Fraccaro, Jillian J M O 'connor, Daniel E Re, Benedict C Jones, Lisa M Debruine, David R Feinberg
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  ABSTRACT: Available online xxx MS. number: A12-00235R Keywords: functional honesty honest signal vocal attractiveness vocal dominance voice pitch Previous research has shown that men prefer higher-pitched women's voices and women prefer lower-pitched men's voices. However, both men and women can modulate their voice pitch, which can affect others' perceptions of the voice. Here we tested whether deliberate pitch changes affect speakers' vocal attractiveness. Our results suggest that deliberately exaggerating sex-typical voice pitch (i.e. lowering pitch in men and raising pitch in women) does not necessarily increase vocal attractiveness but that exaggerating sex-atypical voice pitch (i.e. raising pitch in men and lowering pitch in women) may decrease vocal attractiveness. By contrast with these findings for attractiveness, listeners interpreted lowered-pitch voices as sounding more dominant than habitually pitched voices in same-sex voices, which may aid in avoiding the costs associated with intrasexual competition. These findings suggest that the way humans perceive deliberate manipulations of voice pitch can mitigate the potential costs of using an alterable cue to assess attractiveness, and that functional honesty may only evolve in domains where such honesty would be favourable to perceivers.
  Animal Behaviour 01/2013; · 3.49 Impact Factor
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  Available from: Jillian O'Connor

  Article: The influence of male voice pitch on women's perceptions of relationship investment

  Jillian JM O'Connor, Paul J Fraccaro, David R Feinberg
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  ABSTRACT: The degree to which men invest financial resources, time, and effort into pursuing and maintaining relationships may be perceived by women as a cue to that man’s suitability as father and a mate. Women’s mate preferences are also influenced by cues to underlying heritable mate quality, such as an attractive, masculine voice. Relatively more masculine men may be able to provide heritable benefits to offspring, but masculinity is associated with decreased investment in relationships and offspring. Both individual differences in women’s preferences for masculine voices and women’s attributions of negative personality traits to masculine men suggests that women may be somewhat aware of the negative associations between men’s physical masculinity and relationship/parental investment. In the current study, we found that in general, women perceived feminized men’s voices as significantly more likely to invest time and effort, and be financially generous with romantic partners. We also found that women’s preferences for masculine voice pitch in a long-term, but not short-term relationship context, were positively related to perceptions of male financial generosity and investment of time and effort in romantic relationships. These perceptions may represent an adaptive heuristic that aids women in selecting long-term mates that are likely to invest in relationships and offspring.
  Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 01/2012;
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  Available from: Jillian O'Connor

  Article: Female Preferences for Male Vocal and Facial Masculinity in Videos

  Jillian JM O'Connor, David R Feinberg, Paul J Fraccaro, Diana J Borak, Cara C Tigue, Daniel E Re, Benedict C Jones, Anthony C Little, Bernard Tiddeman
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  ABSTRACT: Vocal and facial masculinity are cues to underlying testosterone in men and influence women’s mate preferences. Consistent with the proposal that facial and vocal masculinity signal common information about men, prior work has revealed correlated female preferences for male facial and vocal masculinity. Previous studies have assessed women’s preferences for male facial and vocal masculinity by presenting faces and voices independently and using static face stimuli. By contrast, here we presented women with short video clips in which male faces and voices were simultaneously manipulated in masculinity. We found that women who preferred masculine faces also preferred masculine voices. Furthermore, women whose faces were rated as relatively more attractive preferred both facial and vocal masculinity more than did women whose faces were rated as less attractive. These findings complement other evidence for cross-modal masculinity preferences among women and demonstrate that preferences observed in studies using still images and/or independently presented vocal stimuli are also observed when dynamic faces and voices are displayed simultaneously in video format.
  Ethology 01/2012; 118:321-330. · 2.01 Impact Factor
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  Available from: Jillian O'Connor

  Article: Men's judgments of women's facial attractiveness from two- and three-dimensional images are similar.

  Cara C Tigue, Katarzyna Pisanski, Jillian J M O'Connor, Paul J Fraccaro, David R Feinberg
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  ABSTRACT: Although most research on human facial attractiveness has used front-facing two-dimensional (2D) images, our primary visual experience with faces is in three dimensions. Because face coding in the human visual system is viewpoint-specific, faces may be processed differently from different angles. Thus, results from perceptual studies using front-facing 2D facial images may not be generalizable to other viewpoints. We used rotating three-dimensional (3D) images of women's faces to test whether men's attractiveness ratings of women's faces from 2D and 3D images differed. We found a significant positive correlation between men's judgments of women's facial attractiveness from 2D and 3D images (r = 0.707), suggesting that attractiveness judgments from 2D images are valid and provide similar information about women's attractiveness as do 3D images. We also found that women's faces were rated significantly more attractive in 3D images than in 2D images. Our study verifies a novel method using 3D facial images, which may be important for future research on viewpoint-specific social perception. This method may also be valuable for the accurate measurement and assessment of facial characteristics such as averageness, identity, attractiveness, and emotional expression.
  Journal of Vision 01/2012; 12(12). · 3.38 Impact Factor
• Article: Like father, like self: Emotional closeness to father predicts women's preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex faces

  CD Watkins, LM DeBruine, FG Smith, BC Jones, J Vukovic, PJ Fraccaro
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  ABSTRACT: Kin recognition is an essential component of kin-directed adaptive behavior. Consequently, potential mechanisms of kin recognition, such as learning a kin phenotype from family members (familial imprinting) or self (self-referential phenotype matching), have been the focus of much research. Studies using computer-manipulated self-resemblance show effects for both same-sex and opposite-sex faces and have been interpreted as evidence for self-referential phenotype matching. However, more recent research on sex-contingent face processing suggests that visual experience with faces of one sex has little influence on perceptions of faces of the other sex, calling into question how self-referential phenotype matching can influence perceptions of opposite-sex faces. Because children resemble their parents, familial imprinting could influence preferences for self-resemblance, reconciling these seemingly incompatible results for sex-contingent face processing and effects of self-resemblance on perceptions of opposite-sex faces. Here we show that women’s reported emotional closeness to their father, but not mother, is positively correlated with their preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex, but not same-sex, individuals. These findings implicate familial imprinting in preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex individuals and raise the possibility that familial imprinting and self-referential phenotype matching have context-specific effects on attitudes to self-resembling individuals.
  Evolution and Human Behavior 01/2011; 32:70-75. · 3.11 Impact Factor