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Vocal and visual attractiveness is related in women
Abstract
We investigated the relation between visual and vocal attractiveness in women as judged by men. We recorded 34 women speaking four vowels and measured the peak frequency, the first five harmonic frequencies, the first five formant frequencies and formant dispersion. The women were also photographed (head shot), several body measures were taken and their ages were recorded. The voices were played to male judges who were asked to assess the women's age and vocal attractiveness from the recording. The men were then asked to assess the attractiveness of the photographs. Men were in strong agreement on which was an attractive voice and face; and women with attractive faces had attractive voices. Higher-frequency voices were assessed as being more attractive and as belonging to younger women (the lowest frequency produced is a good indicator of age in women in general). Larger women had lower voices and were judged as having less attractive faces and voices. Taller women had narrower formant dispersion as predicted. The results imply that different measures of attractiveness are in agreement and signal similar qualities, such as female age, body size and possibly hormonal profile. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
... Both correlational and experimental studies have reported that more attractive male voices tend to have lower fundamental frequencies 12,[14][15][16][17] , and that more attractive female voices tend to have higher fundamental frequencies 5,14,15,[18][19][20][21] . Although some studies have reported preferences for male voices with more masculine formant frequencies 21,22 and female voices with more feminine formant frequencies 21,23 , other studies did not replicate these patterns of results 12,24 . ...
... Indeed, previous studies have reported that fundamental frequency (i.e., voice pitch) is negatively correlated with male vocal attractiveness and positively correlated with www.nature.com/scientificreports/ female vocal attractiveness 6,14,17,19,22 and/or that formant frequencies (an acoustic marker of vocal tract length) are negatively correlated with male vocal attractiveness and positively correlated with female vocal attractiveness [23][24][25] . Consequently, Study 3 tested for possible relationships between the vocal attractiveness ratings collected in Study 2 and both fundamental frequency (F0) and estimated vocal tract length (VTL) derived from measured formant frequencies. ...
... That the negative effect of pitch on male vocal attractiveness was greater than the positive effect of pitch on female vocal attractiveness is also consistent with previous work 7 . By contrast with our results for fundamental frequency, formant frequencies did not predict either male or female vocal attractiveness in our study [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . Thus, although we do not replicate a significant effect of averaging voices on attractiveness ratings, we do replicate the previously reported effect of voice pitch (i.e., it does not appear that there is something inherently unusual or atypical about this particular sample of raters or voices). ...
Vocal attractiveness influences important social outcomes. While most research on the acoustic parameters that influence vocal attractiveness has focused on the possible roles of sexually dimorphic characteristics of voices, such as fundamental frequency (i.e., pitch) and formant frequencies (i.e., a correlate of body size), other work has reported that increasing vocal averageness increases attractiveness. Here we investigated the roles these three characteristics play in judgments of the attractiveness of male and female voices. In Study 1, we found that increasing vocal averageness significantly decreased distinctiveness ratings, demonstrating that participants could detect manipulations of vocal averageness in this stimulus set and using this testing paradigm. However, in Study 2, we found no evidence that increasing averageness significantly increased attractiveness ratings of voices. In Study 3, we found that fundamental frequency was negatively correlated with male vocal attractiveness and positively correlated with female vocal attractiveness. By contrast with these results for fundamental frequency, vocal attractiveness and formant frequencies were not significantly correlated. Collectively, our results suggest that averageness may not necessarily significantly increase attractiveness judgments of voices and are consistent with previous work reporting significant associations between attractiveness and voice pitch.
... For humans, multiple studies have suggested that di erent modalities covary in signaling underlying mate quality. For example, both vocal and facial characteristics correlate in women (Collins & Missing, 2003), and may be used to assess hormonal status (Feinberg, 2008), and ratings of facial attractiveness and olfactory attractiveness concord in both men and women (Cornwell et al., 2004). This suggests that the di erent modalities might indeed reflect the same qualities in humans. ...
... Traditionally, studies have investigated the role of scent, sight and sound by means of isolated experiments in which participants rated multiple static samples for attractiveness and long-term partner suitability. Consecutively, these ratings are o en linked to traits of the sampled individual, such as masculinity and femininity (Collins & Missing, 2003;Cornwell et al., 2004;Little, Connely, et al., 2011). However, it has not yet been established how these individual ratings relate to real-life partner choice. ...
... This finding is in line with the back-up cue hypothesis (Candolin, 2003;Johnstone, 1997). However, it is important to note that the e ect sizes were very small when compared to previous studies (Collins & Missing, 2003;Cornwell et al., 2004), and 3 it is therefore questionable whether such low correlations have any practical relevance. In addition, we did not find clear di erences between sexes, while some of the previous studies only described such concordance of multimodal attractiveness ratings in a specific sex (e.g., Collins & Missing, 2003). ...
... Numerous studies report that women's facial and vocal attractiveness positively correlate, with the strength of the association ranging from weak (r = 0.2; to medium (r = 0.5; Collins & Missing, 2003;but see, Zäske et al., 2018), however the same relationship is generally not found in men but see, Saxton et al., 2006). In contrast to research demonstrating that sensory inputs independently contribute to measures of overall attractiveness, concordance between judgments of attractiveness is usually suggested to support the redundancy hypothesis (e.g., Feinberg, Jones, DeBruine, et al., 2005) because concordance is thought to indicate that a common trait, such as reproductive potential, is being communicated by each attractiveness modality. ...
... Yet, little work has investigated how independent multisensory attractiveness ratings are related. While some studies have examined the contributions of face and body to overall attractiveness (e.g., Brown et al., 1986;, and others have correlated facial and vocal attractiveness Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg, Jones, DeBruine, et al., 2005;, scant research has considered body odor attractiveness. Our study simultaneously investigates the relationships between judgments of body odor, face, and voice attractiveness. ...
... However, for men, we found no evidence of covariance between modalities of attractiveness. Our findings are consistent with most prior studies, which also report with-in person attractiveness correlations across sensory modalities in women Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg, Jones, DeBruine, et al., 2005;, but not men . In contrast, Roth et al. (2021) found weak, but significantly positive correlations between both male and female face and voice, as well as face and body odor attractiveness. ...
Prevalent beliefs in both scientific and popular culture are 1) humans have a poor sense of smell, and 2) smell plays a minimal role in social behavior. However, this consensus is shifting with researchers even suggesting olfaction influences mate choice. Still, studies of odor-based communication in humans remain inconclusive because of poorly designed experiments, scant replication studies, and publication bias. Thus, the goal of this dissertation was to return to first principles and build a solid foundation for the study of human olfaction and mate choice. Chapter 1 provides a rich overview of human olfaction and odor-based communication, revealing the poor methods used in studies of pheromones and body odor. Chapter 2 investigates the impact of a putative female pheromone, copulin, on men’s mating psychology, using rigorous methods (e.g., a placebo-controlled, odor-masking design) and a large sample (n = 243 men). The findings reveal that when the limitations of prior pheromone research are addressed, there is no evidence that copulin is a pheromone. Chapter 3 asks whether some individuals smell more or less attractive to the opposite sex. Studies of mate choice from an evolutionary perspective often begin by investigating whether individuals of one sex agree on the attractiveness level (e.g., facial attractiveness) of individuals of the opposite sex. For comparison, a uniform methodology was used to assess agreement in judgments of physical and vocal attractiveness, modalities in which evidence of shared preferences is generally accepted. No differences were discovered between modalities. Therefore, to the extent shared preferences exist for faces and voices, there is also evidence of shared preferences for body odors. Chapter 4 examines the relationships between independent multisensory judgments of attractiveness (i.e., face, voice, and body odor attractiveness). For men, modalities of attractiveness did not covary. However, in women results indicate weak covariances between all modalities. Moreover, a latent general attractiveness factor (i.e., common fitness correlate) modestly contributed to covariances between modality-specific attractiveness. Together, these findings suggest historical views of human olfaction as unimportant were misguided. In fact, the evidence demonstrates body odor plays a similarly important role to physical and vocal attraction in human mate choice.
... Voice pitch is closely related to the fundamental frequency (f 0 ), whereby f 0 describes the actual physical phenomenon and voice pitch our perception of f 0 , i.e., how we interpret the signal. Accordingly, several studies found that men judge female voices with higher f 0 as more attractive than female voices with lower f 0 (Apicella and Feinberg, 2009;Little et al., 2011;Mook and Mitchel, 2019), and this effect was even found when f 0 was higher than their average female f 0 of 200 Hz (Collins and Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2008). Similarly, voices that were increased in f 0 , i.e., feminized, were always preferred over voices that were lowered in f 0 , i.e., masculinized (Puts et al., 2011). ...
... Nonetheless, it remains unclear to what extent both modalities interact. Some studies have investigated the correlation between facial and vocal attractiveness and found that women who received high attractiveness ratings for images of their faces also received high attractiveness ratings for recordings of their voices, indicating that vocal and facial attractiveness are related and naturally co-occur (Zuckerman et al., 1991;Collins and Missing, 2003). A recent experimental study of cross-modal effects (Mook and Mitchel, 2019) investigated their possible mutual influence by manipulating f 0 and face averageness, and asking male raters to judge female Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org ...
... In contrast, temporally simultaneous properties of dynamic stimuli (e.g., real-life situations or videos) promote integration by offering information about intermodal properties such as lip movements (Sumby and Pollack, 1954), rate (Munhall et al., 1996), or rhythm (Bahrick and Lickliter, 2004), and these simultaneous properties are drastically reduced or non-existent when static images are combined with voice recordings (Lander, 2008). Moreover, vowels were used as audio stimuli (as well as in Collins and Missing, 2003). Prior studies have found that vowels might not deliver relevant cues of fertility (Lindholm et al., 1997;Bryant and Haselton, 2009;Fischer et al., 2011), and it has been suggested that judgments of voice traits can differ between short speech sounds (e.g., vowels) and longer trains of speech as in real-life encounters (Pisanski and Feinberg, 2018). ...
Vocal and facial cues typically co-occur in natural settings, and multisensory processing of voice and face relies on their synchronous presentation. Psychological research has examined various facial and vocal cues to attractiveness as well as to judgements of sexual dimorphism, health, and age. However, few studies have investigated the interaction of vocal and facial cues in attractiveness judgments under naturalistic conditions using dynamic, ecologically valid stimuli. Here, we used short videos or audio tracks of females speaking full sentences and used a manipulation of voice pitch to investigate cross-modal interactions of voice pitch on facial attractiveness and related ratings. Male participants had to rate attractiveness, femininity, age, and health of synchronized audio-video recordings or voices only, with either original or modified voice pitch. We expected audio stimuli with increased voice pitch to be rated as more attractive, more feminine, healthier, and younger. If auditory judgements cross-modally influence judgements of facial attributes, we additionally expected the voice pitch manipulation to affect ratings of audiovisual stimulus material. We tested 106 male participants in a within-subject design in two sessions. Analyses revealed that voice recordings with increased voice pitch were perceived to be more feminine and younger, but not more attractive or healthier. When coupled with video recordings, increased pitch lowered perceived age of faces, but did not significantly influence perceived attractiveness, femininity, or health. Our results suggest that our manipulation of voice pitch has a measurable impact on judgements of femininity and age, but does not measurably influence vocal and facial attractiveness in naturalistic conditions.
... For humans, multiple studies have suggested that different modalities covary in signaling underlying mate quality. For example, both vocal and facial characteristics correlate in women (Collins & Missing, 2003), and may be used to assess hormonal status (Feinberg, 2008), and ratings of facial attractiveness and olfactory attractiveness concord in both men and women (Cornwell et al., 2004). This suggests that the different modalities might indeed reflect the same qualities in humans. ...
... Traditionally, studies have investigated the role of scent, sight and sound by means of isolated experiments in which participants rated multiple static samples for attractiveness and long-term partner suitability. Consecutively, these ratings are often linked to traits of the sampled individual, such as masculinity and feminity (e.g., Collins & Missing, 2003;Cornwell et al., 2004;Little, Connely, Feinberg, Jones, & Roberts, 2011). However, it has not yet been established how these individual ratings relate to real-life partner choice. ...
... Estimates and effect size measures for independent logistic regressions, separately testing the effect of attractiveness in each modality on propensity to date again (see Supplementary Table 7 the effect sizes were very small when compared to previous studies (Collins & Missing, 2003;Cornwell et al., 2004), and it is therefore questionable whether such low correlations have any practical relevance. In addition, we did not find clear differences between sexes, while some of the previous studies only described such concordance of multimodal attractiveness ratings in a specific sex (e.g., Collins & Missing, 2003). ...
When people meet a potential partner for the first time, they are confronted with multiple sources of information, encompassing different modalities, that they can use to determine whether this partner is suitable for them or not. While visual attractiveness has widely been studied with regard to partner choice, olfactory and auditory cues have received less attention, even though they might influence the attitudes that people have towards their partner. Therefore, in this study, we employed a combination of pre-date multimodal rating tasks followed by speed-date sessions. This offered a naturalistic setup to study partner choice and disentangle the relative effects of a priori attractiveness ratings of sight, scent and sound on date success. Visual attractiveness ratings showed a strong positive correlation with propensity to meet the partner again, while the effects of olfactory and auditory attractiveness were negligible or not robust. Furthermore, we found no robust sex differences in the importance of the three modalities. Our findings underscore the relative importance of visual attractiveness in initial mate choice, but do not corroborate the idea that static pre-date measures of auditory and olfactory attractiveness can predict first date outcomes.
... Voice attractiveness has been shown to covary with sexually dimorphic traits: individuals with more attractive voices also tend to have larger shoulder-to-hip ratios (for males) or smaller waist-to-hip ratios (for females) [24]. Voice attractiveness is also related to certain acoustic characteristics (e.g. higher fundamental frequency and more spread formants preferred for female's voices, see [25]). More nuanced instances of voice attractiveness have also been described, with, for example, conformance to community speech norms increasing voice attractiveness ratings [26]. ...
... Our findings of very limited shared taste across all categories of vocalizations agree with previous research on singing voice preferences [31], but contrast with studies on speaking voice attractiveness reporting low to moderate interrater agreement. For comparison, Kendall's concordance coefficient ranged from W = 0.19 to 0.62 in previous studies [24][25][26]87]. In our data, Kendall's W was 0.14 for adult-directed speech (or 0.12 based on 29 heterosexual male raters). ...
Voice preferences are an integral part of interpersonal interactions and shape how people connect with each other. While a large number of studies have investigated the mechanisms behind (speaking) voice attractiveness, very little research was dedicated to other types of vocalizations. In this Registered Report, we proposed to investigate voice preferences with an integrative approach. To this end, we used a newly recorded and validated stimulus set of contrasting vocalizations by 22 highly trained female singers speaking and singing the same material (in Brazilian Portuguese) in contrasting styles (sung as a lullaby, as a pop song or as an opera aria; and spoken aloud as if directed to an adult audience and as if directed to an infant). We asked 62 participants to rate these vocalizations in terms of how much they liked them; and we compared the amount of shared taste (that is, how much participants agreed in their preferences) across styles. We found highly idiosyncratic preferences across all styles. Our predictions concerning shared taste were not confirmed: although shared taste was higher for lullaby than for pop singing, it was unexpectedly higher for operatic than pop singing, and higher for infant-directed than adult-directed speech. Conversely, our prediction of limited consistency in average preferences for some singers across styles was confirmed, contradicting sexual selection-based ideas of singing and speaking as ‘backup’ signals of individual fitness. Our findings draw attention to the role of individual differences in voice preferences and highlight the need for a broader approach to understanding the underlying mechanisms of voice preferences. Stage 1 recommendation and review history: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id=357. Stage 2 recommendation and review history: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id=802.
... Vocal folds change at puberty due to estrogen and testosterone effects leading male voices to become lower pitched and female voices to become higher pitched (see Collins, 2000, Collins & Missing, 2003Puts, 2005;Puts et al., 2006). Banse and Scherer (1996) also report that pitch is the most perceptually salient feature of human voice. ...
... Also, estrogen and testosterone-related features of the body and face index male and female attractiveness (see Wade, 2000Wade, , 2003, leading voice pitch to affect attractiveness judgments. Numerous studies show that men with deeper voices are rated as more attractive (see, for example, Collins, 2000, Oguchi & Kikuchi, 1997Feinberg et al., 2005;Hodges-Simeon et al., 2010;Puts, 2005;Puts et al., 2006) and female voices that are higher pitched are rated as more attractive (see, for example, Borkowska & Pawlowski, 2011;Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2008;Jones et al., 2008Jones et al., , 2010Puts et al., 2006Puts et al., , 2011. Additionally, women's vocal pitch rises when they are ovulating and consequently their voices are rated as more attractive during this time (Puts, 2005). ...
... We find that a latent general attractiveness factor (i.e., common underlying variable) contributes modestly to the correlations between women's face, odor, and voice attractiveness. (e.g., Brown et al., 1986;Mueser et al., 1984;Peters et al., 2007), and others have correlated facial and vocal attractiveness [8,[27][28][29]31,32,40], less published work has considered body odor attractiveness. Here, we simultaneously investigated the relationships between judgments of body odor, face, and voice attractiveness by having men and women rate the attractiveness of opposite-sex participants' body odors, faces, and voices (881 ratings). ...
... However, for men, we found no correlations between modalities of attractiveness. Our findings are consistent with most prior studies, which also report within-person attractiveness correlations across sensory modalities in women [8,[27][28][29]31,32,35,36,40], but not men [8,27,[31][32][33]. In contrast, Roth et al. [39] found weak, but significantly positive correlations between both male and female facial, vocal, and olfactory attractiveness. ...
Human mate value is assessed on numerous variables including, reproductive potential and disease resistance. Many of these variables have been correlated with judgments of physical, vocal, and odor attractiveness. While some researchers posit that attractiveness judgments made across different sensory modalities reflect the same underlying variable(s) (i.e., the information is redundant), others suggest that judgments made in different modalities reflect different variables. Previous studies of human attractiveness indicate that attractiveness judgments of others’ faces, bodies, and voices are intercorrelated, which is suggested to support the redundancy hypothesis. Less is known about body odor attractiveness. Only one study has simultaneously investigated the relationships between judgments of body odor, face, and voice attractiveness finding weak positive associations, but small effect sizes. In this study, we empirically investigate the correlation between different modalities of attractiveness in men and women in the largest sample to date (N = 881 ratings). For men, we find no correlations between modalities of attractiveness. However, for women we find odor, face, and voice attractiveness are weakly correlated. Moreover, a general attractiveness factor (i.e., a common underlying variable) modestly contributed to the observed correlations between modality-specific attractiveness judgments, providing some evidence for the redundancy hypothesis.
... These alterations in female physiology can be further enhanced by behavioral alterations, because female rats will drag their anogenital region against the ground when fertile, depositing chemicals that can be detected by males [110]. In humans, it has been shown that men's perception of women's attractiveness increases around ovulation, which can arise from changes in facial appearance [112,113] and from an elevation in vocal pitch [114], a feature preferred by men [115]. However, other studies have failed to find sex hormone-dependent modulation of female attractiveness [116], and future work is needed to understand whether humans also undergo changes in sexual attractiveness across the reproductive cycle. ...
... Reduced opioidergic input onto the VMH favors sexual receptivity. males solely during the receptive phase of the cycle [115,116]. Surprisingly, despite differences in neural processing that are observed at the periphery, the initial phase of the investigatory interaction does not appear to be modulated by the reproductive cycle, at least in laboratory conditions [35]. ...
Sex is fundamental for the evolution and survival of most species. However, sex can also pose danger, because it increases the risk of predation and disease transmission, among others. Thus, in many species, cyclic fluctuations in the concentration of sex hormones coordinate sexual receptivity and attractiveness with female reproductive capacity, promoting copulation when fertilization is possible and preventing it otherwise. In recent decades, numerous studies have reported a wide variety of sex hormone-dependent plastic rearrangements across the entire brain, including areas relevant for female sexual behavior. By contrast, how sex hormone-induced plasticity alters the computations performed by such circuits, such that collectively they produce the appropriate periodic switches in female behavior, is mostly unknown. In this review, we highlight the myriad sex hormone-induced neuronal changes known so far, the full repertoire of behavioral changes across the reproductive cycle, and the few examples where the relationship between sex hormone-dependent plasticity, neural activity, and behavior has been established. We also discuss current challenges to causally link the actions of sex hormones to the modification of specific cellular pathways and behavior, focusing on rodents as a model system while drawing a comparison between rodents and humans wherever possible.
... The voice is most certainly a sex-defining sensory modality as a broad body of literature exists reporting that men speak at a lower vocal pitch than women (Fitch and Holbrook, 1970;Childers, 1991;Puts et al., 2012;Titze, 2017). Most men prefer women with higher pitch voices (Collins and Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2008;Jones et al., 2008;Apicella and Feinberg, 2009;Puts et al., 2011;Abend et al., 2015) particularly for short-term mating while women prefer men with lower pitch voice (Collins, 2000;Feinberg et al., 2005Feinberg et al., , 2006Feinberg et al., , 2008Puts et al., 2006Puts et al., , 2007Jones et al., 2010), although this might also only occur when looking for short-term partners (Puts, 2005;Jones et al., 2010). Furthermore, certain voice features, such as volume or speech duration, are correlated with a higher number of sexual encounters and mating success for both men and women (Hughes et al., 2004;Puts, 2005;Puts et al., 2006;Apicella et al., 2007;Hodges-Simeon et al., 2011;Atkinson et al., 2012;Suire et al., 2018). ...
... Moreover, it seems that vision and audition are particularly redundantly integrated, as high pitch voices of women were correlated with how visually attractive men also considered the women (Collins and Missing, 2003;Jones et al., 2008;Abend et al., 2015). ...
Mate choice is a potent generator of diversity and a fundamental pillar for sexual selection and evolution. Mate choice is a multistage affair, where complex sensory information and elaborate actions are used to identify, scrutinize, and evaluate potential mating partners. While widely accepted that communication during mate assessment relies on multimodal cues, most studies investigating the mechanisms controlling this fundamental behavior have restricted their focus to the dominant sensory modality used by the species under examination, such as vision in humans and smell in rodents. However, despite their undeniable importance for the initial recognition, attraction, and approach towards a potential mate, other modalities gain relevance as the interaction progresses, amongst which are touch and audition. In this review, we will: (1) focus on recent findings of how touch and audition can contribute to the evaluation and choice of mating partners, and (2) outline our current knowledge regarding the neuronal circuits processing touch and audition (amongst others) in the context of mate choice and ask (3) how these neural circuits are connected to areas that have been studied in the light of multisensory integration.
... It is argued that sexual dimorphism in voice pitch has been shaped by sexual selection to communicate important information for mating behavior (e.g., reproductive status and attractiveness; Pisanski & Feinberg, 2018). Consistent with this position, women with higher pitched voices are perceived as more attractive, younger, feminine, and desirable as spouses (Apicella & Feinberg, 2009;Borkowska & Pawlowski, 2011;Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2008;Pisanski & Rendall, 2011;Pisanski et al., 2012). When presented with female voices varying in pitch, heterosexual men prefer higher-pitched voices . ...
... Because voice attractiveness is higher during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle (e.g., Bryant & Haselton, 2009;Çelik et al., 2013;Karthikeyan & Locke, 2015;Pipitone & Gallup, 2008;Puts et al., 2013;Shoup-Knox & Pipitone, 2015), and voice pitch positively predicts attractiveness ratings (e.g., Apicella & Feinberg, 2009;Borkowska & Pawlowski, 2011;Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2008;Pisanski & Rendall, 2011;Pisanski et al., 2012), it has been hypothesized that pitch increases during the fertile phase, thereby increasing voice attractiveness. However, attempts to detect these changes have yielded mixed results. ...
Objective
Research has demonstrated that men prefer women’s voices with higher pitch and that women’s voices recorded at high compared to low fertility phases of the menstrual cycle are rated as more attractive. These findings suggest that voice conveys information relevant to reproductive success. Because voice attractiveness is higher during the high fertility phase and voice pitch positively predicts attractiveness ratings, it has been hypothesized that cyclical changes in vocal attractiveness are driven by changes in voice pitch. However, attempts to detect acoustic changes have produced mixed results. With the higher degree of ecological validity achieved by including social context (simulated interactions with men and women) and by recording voice in the three phases of menstrual cycles, the present study addresses limitations of previous research.
Methods
Forty-eight naturally cycling women were recorded during the menstrual, late follicular (high fertility), and luteal phases while leaving voice messages to masculinized and femininized men and women.
Results
No cycle-related changes in pitch and pitch variability for the recordings directed to masculinized and femininized men and women were detected. By including relationship status as predictor in additional models, higher-order interaction effects showed that single and partnered women displayed opposite cycle-related pitch changes directed only to women, but not men.
Conclusion
The cycle-related voice changes found in the present study do not support the hypothesis that cyclic pitch variations represent an adaptive mechanism for attracting partners. We discuss cyclic changes in voice pitch in relation to intrasexual competition by taking into an account that the present study is likely underpowered for adequate testing of the complex higher-order interactions.
... Voices. Male preferences for voices of adult females that are relatively high-pitched have been reported consistently across multiple studies (Borkowska & Pawlowski, 2011;Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2008;Valentova et al., 2019;reviews in Barkat-Defradas et al., 2021;Suire et al., 2021). Several studies link higher pitch of women's voices with steroid hormone effects: pitch has been associated with lower testosterone and with higher estradiol (Abitbol et al., 1999;Hamdan et al., 2018;Hannoun et al., 2011), administration of a synthetic androgen, danazol, to women with endometriosis causes changes (deepening) of pitch in about 5-10% of cases (Pattie et al., 1998), and vocal pitch is positively correlated with digit ratio among 5-year old children (Levrero et al., 2018). ...
... To the extent that female overall "attractiveness" is mediated through the integration of multiple traits, all of which develop in part under the effects of relatively low testosterone and relatively high estradiol, attractiveness-related phenotypes should tend to be positively associated with one another. Such positive associations have been reported for facial with vocal attractiveness (Collins & Missing, 2003;Wheatley et al., 2014), higher vocal attractiveness with lower WHR (Hughes et al., 2004), higher facial attractiveness with lower BMI (Hu et al., 2019; for a genetic correlation), and facial shape with WHR and BMI (Mayer et al., 2017;Pisanski et al., 2016). ...
We propose and evaluate a new theory for helping to explain the evolution of endometriosis risk in humans. By this theory, endometriosis risk evolved in the context of sexual selection by males for high, relatively female-biased expression of sexually dimorphic and female-limited phenotypes associated with low testosterone and high female reproductive fitness. The theory is supported by extensive data, showing that: (a) endometriosis involves higher expression of major female-biasing genes, and lower expression of major male-biasing genes, that orchestrate prenatal sexual differentiation; (b) endometriosis and its correlates are associated with low prenatal and postnatal testosterone, both of which have female-biasing effects on traits; (c) low prenatal and postnatal testosterone, and endometriosis, are associated with relatively female-biased phenotypic expression for a large suite of sexually dimorphic and sex-limited traits; (d) relatively female-biased expression of these traits is commonly associated with higher fertility and fecundity; (e) some traits, including female facial features, vocal pitch, and breast size, fit with all of the predictions of the model, though they have yet to be studied in relation to endometriosis; and (f) traits linked with low prenatal and postnatal testosterone or high estradiol, and traits associated with endometriosis in humans, are preferred by males across multiple species of non-human mammals. Risk and symptoms of endometriosis thus appear to involve and represent, in part, maladaptive extremes of sexually selected female-limited and sexually dimorphic traits.
... Centre of gravity is the frequency which divides the voice spectrum into two halves, so a higher Centre of gravity when responding to attractive stimulus speakers means that women's voices had more high-frequency energy compared to when responding to unattractive stimulus speakers. Of relevance, higher-frequency female voices have been reported to be more attractive than female voices with lower frequencies (Collins and Missing, 2003;Jones et al., 2010). Taken together, these findings suggest that women tried to make their voices sound more desirable and more attractive when speaking to stimulus speakers with attractive voices. ...
Introduction
Research has shown that women’s vocal characteristics change during the menstrual cycle. Further, evidence suggests that individuals alter their voices depending on the context, such as when speaking to a highly attractive person, or a person with a different social status. The present study aimed at investigating the degree to which women’s voices change depending on the vocal characteristics of the interaction partner, and how any such changes are modulated by the woman’s current menstrual cycle phase.
Methods
Forty-two naturally cycling women were recorded once during the late follicular phase (high fertility) and once during the luteal phase (low fertility) while reproducing utterances of men and women who were previously assessed to have either attractive or unattractive voices.
Results
Phonetic analyses revealed that women’s voices in response to speakers changed depending on their menstrual cycle phase (F0 variation, maximum F0, Centre of gravity) and depending on the stimulus speaker’s vocal attractiveness (HNR, Formants 1–3, Centre of gravity), and sex (Formant 2). Also, the vocal characteristics differed when reproducing spoken sentences of the stimulus speakers compared to when they read out written sentences (minimum F0, Formants 2–4).
Discussion
These results provide further evidence that women alter their voice depending on the vocal characteristics of the interaction partner and that these changes are modulated by the menstrual cycle phase. Specifically, the present findings suggest that cyclic shifts on women’s voices may occur only in social contexts (i.e., when a putative interaction partner is involved).
... Moreover, the shimmer was significantly lower, while HNR and intensity were noticeably higher in attractive than in unattractive male voices. Previous research has consistently indicated that lower-pitched male voices are perceived as more attractive (Apicella & Feinberg, 2009;Collins, 2000;Collins & Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2005Feinberg et al., , 2006. The present findings align with the previous research, demonstrating that the attractiveness of voices is influenced by acoustic parameters (results of the acoustical parameter analysis are shown in Table S1). ...
Although the attractiveness of voices plays an important role in social interactions, it is unclear how voice attractiveness and social interest influence social decision‐making. Here, we combined the ultimatum game with recording event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) and examined the effect of attractive versus unattractive voices of the proposers, expressing positive versus negative social interest (“I like you” vs. “I don't like you”), on the acceptance of the proposal. Overall, fair offers were accepted at significantly higher rates than unfair offers, and high voice attractiveness increased acceptance rates for all proposals. In ERPs in response to the voices, their attractiveness and expressed social interests yielded early additive effects in the N1 component, followed by interactions in the subsequent P2, P3 and N400 components. More importantly, unfair offers elicited a larger Medial Frontal Negativity (MFN) than fair offers but only when the proposer's voice was unattractive or when the voice carried positive social interest. These results suggest that both voice attractiveness and social interest moderate social decision‐making and there is a similar “beauty premium” for voices as for faces.
... While most work supporting this conclusion has focused on judgements based on visual information [2], information from other sensory modalities also affects social evaluations [3,4]. For example, perceivers evaluate trustworthiness, dominance and attractiveness from voices alone [5][6][7], and these judgements impact interpersonal behaviour. People desire to affiliate with others whose voices sound attractive, but not unattractive [8], voters prefer male leaders who sound stereotypically masculine [9,10], and voice characteristics from the first 3 s of defence attorneys' opening statements predict judicial outcomes in the U.S. Supreme Court [11]. ...
People form social evaluations of others following brief exposure to their voices, and these impressions are calibrated based on recent perceptual experience. Participants adapted to voices with fundamental frequency (f o; the acoustic correlate of perceptual pitch) manipulated to be gender-typical (i.e. masculine men and feminine women) or gender-atypical (i.e. feminine men and masculine women) before evaluating unaltered test voices within the same sex. Adaptation resulted in contrastive aftereffects. Listening to gender-atypical voices caused female voices to sound more feminine and attractive (Study 1) and male voices to sound more masculine and attractive (Study 2). Studies 3a and 3b tested whether adaptation occurred on a conceptual or perceptual level, respectively. In Study 3a, perceivers adapted to gender-typical or gender-atypical voices for both men and women (i.e. adaptors pitch manipulated in opposite directions for men and women) before evaluating unaltered test voices. Findings showed weak evidence that evaluations differed between conditions. In Study 3b, perceivers adapted to masculinized or feminized voices for both men and women (i.e. adaptors pitch manipulated in the same direction for men and women) before evaluating unaltered test voices. In the feminized condition, participants rated male targets as more masculine and attractive. Conversely, in the masculinized condition, participants rated female targets as more feminine and attractive. Voices appear to be evaluated according to gender norms that are updated based on perceptual experience as well as conceptual knowledge.
... Vowel sequences (e.g., "a i e o u") have traditionally been a common type of speech stimulus used in studies of human nonverbal vocal communication, including perception studies examining listeners' voice-based judgments of speakers [16][17][18][19] . Due to anatomical constraints on the vocal tract during vowel production 20 , sustained vowels provide the most standardised measures of formant frequencies, and thus are expected to most accurately reflect vocal tract length 7 and body size 11,21 , which are biologically relevant traits in many animals, including humans 8 . ...
Nonverbal acoustic parameters of the human voice provide cues to a vocaliser’s sex, age, and body size that are relevant in human social and sexual communication, and also increasingly so for computer-based voice recognition and synthesis technologies. While studies have shown some capacity in human listeners to gauge these biological traits from unseen speakers, it remains unknown whether speech complexity improves accuracy. Here, in over 200 vocalisers and 1500 listeners of both sexes, we test whether voice-based assessments of sex, age, height and weight vary from isolated vowels and words, to sequences of vowels and words, to full sentences or paragraphs. We show that while listeners judge sex and especially age more accurately as speech complexity increases, accuracy remains high across speech types, even for a single vowel sound. In contrast, the actual heights and weights of vocalisers explain comparatively less variance in listener’s assessments of body size, which do not vary systematically by speech type. Our results thus show that while more complex speech can improve listeners’ biological assessments, the gain is ecologically small, as listeners already show an impressive capacity to gauge speaker traits from extremely short bouts of standardised speech, likely owing to within-speaker stability in underlying nonverbal vocal parameters such as voice pitch. We discuss the methodological, technological, and social implications of these results.
... According to the literature, the emergence of sexual dimorphism in the human voice can be attributed to sexual selection, specifically through the process of female mate choice (Darwin, 1888;Collins, 2000). The literature shows that the voice pitch is perceived to signal information about physical and psychological traits such as attractiveness (Collins, 2000;Collins and Missing, 2003;Feinberg et al., 2005aFeinberg et al., , 2005bJones et al., 2008), social and physical dominance (Puts et al., 2007;Tigue et al., 2012;Rezlescu et al., 2015;Schild et al., 2022), and reproductive capabilities (Feinberg et al., 2005b). Lower voices are perceived to signal masculinity, trustworthiness, competence, and strength (Feinberg et al., 2005b;Puts et al., 2007;Feinberg et al., 2008;Jones et al., 2010;Klofstad, 2016;Banai et al., 2017;Klofstad, 2017;O'Connor and Barclay, 2017). ...
We use an online experiment to study the relative effect on voter behavior of a candidate’s voice pitch and policy stance. We demonstrate a strong voice-pitch bias: between candidates who are identical in every other aspect, voters are more likely to choose the one with the lower voice-pitch, and more so in elections between men than women candidates. We then introduce a novel phenomenon: persistence of voice-pitch bias is the amount of policy difference needed to compensate for voice-pitch bias. While persistence is also gender-dependent, the effect is now reversed: voice-pitch bias is more persistent in elections between women than men candidates. As a possible mechanism, we show that voters perceive candidates with lower voice-pitch as more competent and trustworthy.
... The human voice could be a predictor for the speaker's attributes such as identity [Maguinness et al. 2018], age [Grzybowska and Kacprzak 2016], gender [Junger et al. 2013], size [Smith et al. 2005], emotion [Zhang et al. 2019], personality [Aronovitch 1976], weight [de Souza anddos Santos 2018], and height [Pisanski et al. 2014]. Furthermore, voice influences how we perceive the speaker, such as attractiveness [Collins and Missing 2003;Pisanski et al. 2016], femininity and masculinity [Cartei and Reby 2013;Coleman 1976], social status [Zhang 2016], and ethnicity [Oh et al. 2019]. All in all, voice plays a critical role in the embodiment of a human, as seen with actors, who have been engaging their voices with their faces and bodies to build a holistic portrayal of a virtual character [Berry et al. 2022]. ...
... These stem from the changing nature of steroid hormone profiles with menstrual cycling, pregnancy, lactation, menopause, and hormonal contraceptive use, as well as numerous ecological influences that can moderate reproductive steroid hormone levels, including nutritional, energetic, immunological, and psychosocial stressors (Ellison et al., 1993;Jasienska, 2013;Núñez-de la Mora et al., 2008;Vitzthum, 2009;Vitzthum et al., 2002Vitzthum et al., , 2004. Consequently, much less is known about levels of E2 and P4 in connection with social relationships (Barrett et al., 2015;Lebbe and Woodruff, 2013), although both hormones are implicated as role players in studies of mate attraction (Abitbol et al., 1999;Collins & Missing, 2003;Ellison & Gray, 2012;Feinberg et al., 2005;Havlicek et al., 2005;Jasieńska et al., 2004;Kuukasjärvi et al., 2004;Law Smith et al., 2006;Singh & Bronstad, 2001;Thornhill et al., 2003;Thornhill & Grammer, 1999). ...
Recent studies in social endocrinology have explored the effects of social relationships on female reproductive steroid hormones—estradiol and progesterone—investigating whether they are suppressed in partnered and parous women. Results have been mixed for these hormones although evidence is more consistent that partnered women and women with young children have lower levels of testosterone. These studies were sequential to earlier research on men, based on Wingfield’s Challenge Hypothesis, which showed that men in committed relationships, or with young children, have lower levels of testosterone than unpartnered men or men with older or no children. The study described here explored associations between estradiol and progesterone with partnership and parity among women from two different ethnicities: South Asian and white British. We hypothesized that both steroid hormones would be lower among partnered and/or parous women with children ≤3 years old, regardless of ethnicity. In this study we analyzed data from 320 Bangladeshi and British women of European origin aged 18 to 50 who participated in two previous studies of reproductive ecology and health. Levels of estradiol and progesterone were assayed using saliva and/or serum samples and the body mass index calculated from anthropometric data. Questionnaires provided other covariates. Multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the data. The hypotheses were not supported. We argue here that, unlike links between testosterone and male social relationships, theoretical foundations for such relationships with female reproductive steroid hormones are lacking, especially given the primary role of these steroids in regulating female reproductive function. Further longitudinal studies are needed to explore the bases of independent relationships between social factors and female reproductive steroid hormones.
... A male's voice with a low fundamental and formant frequency is evaluated as more attractive by females than that with a high frequency [88,89]. Likewise, males prefer female voices with high fundamental frequency and wide formant dispersion [90]. One explanation for such pattern of preference is that acoustic characteristics of voice reflect body size and physical function of speakers; females prefer males with voice indicative of a large body size [91,92] and physical strength [93]. ...
Literature on psychological function of testosterone in humans has emphasized its association with such traits as aggressiveness and impulsivity. In addition, increasing number of studies have shown the linkage between testosterone level and individual difference in the strength of preference for other’s sexually dimorphic traits. According to theorists in the field of evolutionary psychology, the preference pattern for sexual dimorphisms had evolved as an adaptive mechanism to increase the odds of reproductive success. But, so far, there are few systematic syntheses of literatures to validate such evolutionary explanation from the perspective of androgenic function. This chapter aims to give an overview of the existing findings on the association between testosterone and preference pattern in humans and discuss their implications for evolutionary explanation of human attractiveness perception.
... In studies concerning an association between facial and vocal attractiveness, the current evidence shows inconsistent results, ranging from strong positive correlations in women only (Abend, Pflüger, Koppensteiner, Coquerelle, & Grammer, 2015;Collins & Missing, 2003;Wheatley et al., 2014) to weak (Zuckerman, Miyake, & Elkin, 1995) or no significant associations (Zäske et al., 2020). This range suggests that the overall pattern of relationships might be similar to that found in the present study between odour and these other modalities. ...
Assessing the attractiveness of potential mating partners typically involves multiple sensory modalities, including the integration of olfactory, visual, and auditory cues. However, predictions diverge on how the individual modalities should relate to each other. According to the backup signals hypothesis, multimodal cues provide redundant information, whereas the multiple messages hypothesis suggests that different modalities provide independent and distinct information about an individual's mating-related quality. The backup signals hypothesis predicts a positive association between assessments based on different modalities, whereas no substantial correlation across modalities is expected under the multiple messageshypothesis. Previous studies testing the two hypotheses have provided mixed results, and a systematic evaluation is currently missing. We performed a systematic review and a meta-analysis of published and unpublished studies to examine the congruence in assessments between human body odour and facial attractiveness, and between body odour and vocal attractiveness. We found positive but weak associations between ratings of body odours and faces (r = 0.1, k = 25), and between body odours and voices (r = 0.1, k = 9). No sex differences were observed in the magnitude of effects. Compared to judgments of facial and vocal attractiveness, our results suggest that assessment of body odour provides independent and non-redundant information about human mating-related quality. Our findings thus provide little support for the backup signals hypothesis and may be better explained by the multiple messages hypothesis.
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... Unlike the vocal folds, the length of the vocal tract is largely limited by the skeletal structures that make it up, the length of the neck and the size of the skull; in turn, these structural features are both determined by, and to some extent determine, body size. Three studies have demonstrated a correlation between formant frequencies and adult height in males (Rendall et al., 2005;Bruckert et al., 2006;Evans et al., 2006), while a similar correlation was found in a study of a female sample (Collins and Missing, 2003). A meta-analysis found that formant frequencies Frontiers in Psychology 05 frontiersin.org of the human voice explained approximately 10% of its body size information (Pisanski et al., 2014). ...
A growing amount of research has shown associations between sexually dimorphic vocal traits and physiological conditions related to reproductive advantage. This paper presented a review of the literature on the relationship between sexually dimorphic vocal traits and sex hormones, body size, and physique. Those physiological conditions are important in reproductive success and mate selection. Regarding sex hormones, there are associations between sex-specific hormones and sexually dimorphic vocal traits; about body size, formant frequencies are more reliable predictors of human body size than pitch/fundamental frequency; with regard to the physique, there is a possible but still controversial association between human voice and strength and combat power, while pitch is more often used as a signal of aggressive intent in conflict. Future research should consider demographic, cross-cultural, cognitive interaction, and emotional motivation influences, in order to more accurately assess the relationship between voice and physiology. Moreover, neurological studies were recommended to gain a deeper understanding of the evolutionary origins and adaptive functions of voice modulation.
... Individuals consider childlike voices to be cute, as they are aware that childlike appearances are endearing (Yim, 2021). Similarly, female voices with higher frequencies are rated as more attractive by men (Collins & Missing, 2003), because such voices signal a small body size (Xu et al., 2013) that is associated with the thin ideal. In addition, a projected small body size resembles a baby that is cute, which elicits compassion and approach motivation (e.g., Nittono, 2016). ...
A major challenge facing female sportscasters resides in their being frequently judged based on physical appearance. However, little is known about the influence of audience perceptions of female sports podcasters’ physical attractiveness when their image is unavailable. Drawing from source credibility and social role theories, the present study employed a posttest-only quasi-experimental design to examine whether Chinese female sports podcasters’ auditory cuteness influences audience perceptions of their credibility, information satisfaction, and podcast continuance intentions. Results demonstrate that female podcaster auditory cuteness is positively connected with audience information satisfaction and perceived attractiveness, both of which further predict perceived expertise. Moreover, audience gender role beliefs dampen their perceived expertise, which along with information satisfaction, is positively associated with podcast continuance intentions. Finally, stronger gender role believers rely more on perceived attractiveness when rating the female sportscaster’s expertise—and less on perceived expertise—when evaluating their podcast continuance intentions.
... In terms of biology, the human voice is highly sexually dimorphic and can be seen as a strong marker of our hormonal identity. Social norms have also shaped the voice differently for men, women, and non-binary people throughout history [90,114,25]. ...
... Males pay more attention to characteristics related to reproductive potential, such as physical attractiveness, while females pay more attention to characteristics that signal resource acquisition, such as status and dominance (Buunk et al., 2002). Furthermore, attractive female faces capture more behavioral attention (Slater et al., 1998;Maner et al., 2003), bring more rewards (Collins and Missing, 2003;Colwell, 2007;Wang et al., 2015), and cause more brain activation in neural mechanisms (Zhang et al., 2012;Ru et al., 2017). In other words, attractive female faces capture more attention and are more visible than attractive male faces. ...
Many studies demonstrate that people form their first impression of a stranger based on facial appearance, and these impressions influence their subsequent decisions and behaviors. However, much less research has examined the factors that moderate the accuracy of first impressions based on a photo of face. The present study included three experiments to explore gender differences in the accuracy of impressions based on faces. The results showed that people judge facial attractiveness more accurately for female faces than for male faces while giving more accurate wealth judgments for male faces than for female faces. Interestingly, although we did not find a significant correlation between confidence ratings and the accuracy of wealth rating, we recognized a significant moderate correlation between confidence ratings and the accuracy of attractiveness ratings when female participants rated male faces. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to reveal gender biases in the accuracy of impression judgments based on facial appearance. These findings imply a significant influence of traditional gender roles on accurate facial judgments.
... Among the common correlations between voice parameters and impressions are fundamental frequency (f0) and body size [13,14]; low f0 and leadership capacity for both male and female speakers [15]; low f0, narrow formant dispersion and dominance and attractiveness in males [16,17]; low f0 and dominance in females [18], wide formant dispersion, higher f0 and attractiveness in females [19,20], but not a f0 too high as to possibly signal sexual immaturity [18]. ...
... For example, a very loud sound or voice is perceived as unpleasant to listen to against a very soft sound, which is perceived as pleasant. A high-pitched voice is perceived as less pleasant to listen to than a low-or medium-pitched voice (Collins & Missing, 2003). Timbre, a third property of sound, allows the auditory system to distinguish between different types of sound production, such as choir voices and musical instruments. ...
This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.
... This is grounded in women's childbearing capacity at young to middle age. In line with this, research by Collins and Missing (2003) and Feinberg et al. (2008) shows a correlation between attractive voices and physical attractiveness, and that higher-frequency voices, an indicator of younger age, are rated as more attractive among male participants across a wider age range. Regarding voice assistants, a qualitative study by Kuzminykh et al. (2020) demonstrated that voices of commercial voice assistants, namely Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant, are perceived in the age range of 20-40 years, respectively middle aged, and therefore theoretically fertile women. ...
Because technologies are frequently used for sexual gratification it seems plausible that artificial communication partners, such as voice assistants, could be used to fulfill sexual needs. While the idea of sexualized interaction with voice assistants has been portrayed in movies (e.g., “Her”), there is a lack of empirical research on the effect of the ontological class (human versus artificial) on the voice’s potential to evoke interest in a sexualized interaction and its perception in terms of sexual attractiveness. The Sexual Interaction Illusion Model (SIIM), which emphasizes influences on sensations evoked by artificial interaction partners, furthermore suggests that there may be contextual influences, especially sexual arousal, that may be crucial for the question of engaging in a sexualized interaction with an artificial entity. To empirically investigate whether the ontological class of the speaker (computer-mediated human in comparison to voice assistants) and the level of sexual arousal affects the heterosexual males’ interest in hearing more flirtatious messages and the perception of the communication partner’s sexual attractiveness, an online experiment with between subject design was conducted. Two hundred and fifty seven respondents were confronted with at least four, and voluntarily six messages from either a computer-mediated human or a flirtatious voice assistant, in interaction with being previously primed sexually or neutrally. The results demonstrated that the effect of sexual arousal was not prevailing on the interest in further messages and the attractiveness perception of the interaction partners, while the ontological class did so. Here, the voice assistant evoked more interest in further messages and the technology itself, while the computer mediated human was perceived to be more sexually attractive and flirtatious, and evoked more social presence. The communication partners social presence was shown to be the predictor with most explanatory power for the interaction partners perceived sexual attractiveness, regardless of whether it was human or artificial. The results underline differences between artificial and human interaction partners, but also underline that especially social presence and the feeling that the user is addressed (in terms of flirtatiousness) is crucial in digitalized intimacy regardless of the ontological class.
... From an evolutionary perspective, sexual dimorphism in voice pitch serves to communicate formidability with lower fundamental frequency (F0) (Puts et al., 2019). Research regarding the role of auditory signals in attractiveness perception suggests that females generally prefer deeper male voices (Collins, 2000;Feinberg et al., 2005a, b), while males prefer higher-frequency female voices (Feinberg et al., 2005a, b), and attribute them to younger females (Collins & Missing, 2003). These preferences stem from associating deeper male voices with larger, more masculine bodies, and higher-pitched female voices with smaller, and more feminine bodies (Pisanski et al., 2012). ...
Social perception is a multimodal process involving vision and audition as central input sources for human social cognitive processes. However, it remains unclear how profoundly deaf people assess others in the context of mating and social interaction. The current study explored the relative importance of different sensory modalities (vision, smell, and touch) in assessments of opposite- and same-sex strangers. We focused on potential sensory compensation processes in mate selection (i.e., increased importance of the intact senses in forming impressions of an opposite-sex stranger as a potential partner). A total of 74 deaf individuals and 100 normally hearing controls were included in the study sample. We found diminished importance of vision and smell in deaf participants compared with controls for opposite- and same-sex strangers, and increased importance of touch for the assessment of same-sex strangers. The results suggested that deaf people rely less on visual and olfactory cues in mating and social assessments, highlighting a possible role of sign language in shaping interpersonal tactile experience in non-romantic relationships.
... Studies that manipulate voice pitch across multiple languages and cultures have found that men's and women's voices with lowered pitch are perceived as more dominant and masculine than those with raised pitch [5,22,93,110,145,152]. People often assess voice pitch as being associated with a certain body mass and height [39,40,63,69,184], attractiveness [39,63,144,154,207], and age [63]. Studies show that a pitch manipulation of 20 Hz is sufficient to alter attractiveness ratings of voices [60-63, 92, 189]. ...
Avatar identification is one of the most promising research areas in games user research. Greater identification with one's avatar has been associated with improved outcomes in the domains of health, entertainment, and education. However, existing studies have focused almost exclusively on the visual appearance of avatars. Yet audio is known to influence immersion/presence, performance, and physiological responses. We perform one of the first studies to date on avatar self-similar audio. We conducted a 2 x 3 (similar/dissimilar x modulation upwards/downwards/none) study in a Java programming game. We find that voice similarity leads to a significant increase in performance, time spent, similarity identification, competence, relatedness, and immersion. Similarity identification acts as a significant mediator variable between voice similarity and all measured outcomes. Our study demonstrates the importance of avatar audio and has implications for avatar design more generally across digital applications.
... Despite the pervasiveness of voices in our daily lives, determining the likability of speakers based on their voices, as opposed to the content of their speech, is not a trivial task. Previous human behavior studies have shown that women prefer low-pitched voices, an indicator of high testosterone levels, in men [1], while men strongly agreed that high frequency female voices were more attractive [2]. However, state-of-the-art computer algorithms are far from being able to accurately quantify likability in voices. ...
... Impressions from secondhand information can be induced by the interaction of what the speaker said and how he/she said it. Although there are many studies about the effects of voice on forming direct impressions (e.g., voice pitch is related to trustworthiness and attractiveness [9][10][11] or people can also construct first impressions of speakers from pieces of a voice [12]), it is unclear how people make social impressions from secondhand information, as well as how they integrate what the speaker says and how he/she speaks about a third person. To understand this process, the present study examined whether the way in which one speaks modulates impression formation based on secondhand information; we did so by adjusting prosody through an advanced voice transformation system [13]. ...
This study investigated the role of secondhand information for impression formation in spoken communication, using a voice transfer system. In Experiment 1, listeners were presented with spoken sentences that represented someone’s behavior in either a positive or negative prosody, which is a clue for forming impressions. Listeners rated each social impression of a person who took on a specific behavior. The results showed that the formed impressions were weaker when the affective characteristics of voices were inconsistent with those of behavioral descriptions. Experiment 2 tested the effects of sentence meanings on forming impressions of speakers’ voices using the same sound files. Results revealed that social impressions of speakers’ voices were also modulated by sentence meaning, even though the sentence was not related to the speaker. This study underscores the role of secondhand information in social impression and advances the understanding of the interaction between prosody and meanings in spoken communication.
... Redundant information across the two modalities likely plays a role in facilitating such cross-modal integration. Faces and voices provide a range of overlapping information, including cues to attractiveness, masculinity, femininity, and health (Collins & Missing, 2003;Saxton et al., 2006;Smith et al., 2016a). Several studies have consequently demonstrated that it is possible to match unfamiliar faces and voices across modality with low, but above chance, accuracy (Krauss et al., 2002;Mavica & Barenholtz, 2013;Smith et al., 2016aSmith et al., , 2016bStevenage et al., 2017). ...
Unimodal and cross-modal information provided by faces and voices contribute to identity percepts. To examine how these sources of information interact, we devised a novel audio-visual sorting task in which participants were required to group video-only and audio-only clips into two identities. In a series of three experiments, we show that unimodal face and voice sorting were more accurate than cross-modal sorting: While face sorting was consistently most accurate followed by voice sorting, cross-modal sorting was at chancel level or below. In Experiment 1, we compared performance in our novel audio-visual sorting task to a traditional identity matching task, showing that unimodal and cross-modal identity perception were overall moderately more accurate than the traditional identity matching task. In Experiment 2, separating unimodal from cross-modal sorting led to small improvements in accuracy for unimodal sorting, but no change in cross-modal sorting performance. In Experiment 3, we explored the effect of minimal audio-visual training: Participants were shown a clip of the two identities in conversation prior to completing the sorting task. This led to small, nonsignificant improvements in accuracy for unimodal and cross-modal sorting. Our results indicate that unfamiliar face and voice perception operate relatively independently with no evidence of mutual benefit, suggesting that extracting reliable cross-modal identity information is challenging.
... Nevertheless, physical characteristics are related to desirable impressions are basically inherent, and their nature makes them difficult to change (that is, they are uncontrollable). For instance, brown eyes are correlated with impressions of trustworthiness (Kleisner et al., 2013), lower-pitched (f0) male voices and higher-pitched female voices are generally attractive to listeners of the opposite sex (e.g., Collins, 2000;Collins & Missing, 2003;Fraccaro et al., 2011), and body-mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) play a critical role in the evaluation of female physical attractiveness by men (Conley & McCabe, 2011;Furnham et al., 2005;Singh et al., 2010). Thus, it is possible to infer that some of us naturally have these attractive physical properties, while some of us do not have them, which leads to a question: What can those who do not have these attractive properties do to improve their own social impressions? ...
People often try to improve their social impressions by performing “good” postures, particularly when others are evaluating them. We aimed to investigate whether such postural management to modulate social impressions are indeed effective, and in the case that they are effective, which impressions are modulated and how quickly these impressions are formed. In total, 207 participants in two different experiments (72 participants in Experiment 1; 135 in Experiment 2) reported their impressions from photographs where other people performed “good” or “bad” postures in three viewing angles (back, front, and side). Participants were presented with a total of 96 pictures without time limitation in Experiment 1; then, for Experiment 2, they were presented with the same pictures, but with time limitations (100, 500, or 1000 ms). In both experiments, participants were asked to report their impressions for each photograph related to the person’s attractiveness, trustworthiness, or dominance. Results showed that the people with “good” postures were generally rated as more attractive and trustworthy. More importantly, it was found that impressions formed after a 100 ms exposure had high correlations with impressions formed in the absence of time constraints, suggesting that the sight of a managed posture for 100 ms is sufficient for people to form social impressions. The findings suggest that people quickly make attractiveness and trustworthiness impressions based on managed postures.
... [8][9][10] Similar changes in facial attractiveness were also reported for the modulation of a number of auditory aspects of the stimuli. 11,12 Face attractiveness can be also modulated by the simultaneous presentation of olfactory stimuli. 13 In particular, Demattè and her colleagues showed that female participants rated male faces as less attractive when presented together with an unpleasant odour, as compared to a condition where the faces were presented together with a pleasant odour or odourless medical air. ...
Facial attractiveness plays an important role in everyday social interactions. In the present study, we investigated whether people's evaluation of attractiveness can be modulated by odours. In Experiment 1, twelve participants rated a series of odours on several perceptual and synaesthetic characteristics (gender, pleasantness, cheerfulness, intensity, arousal and association with food), along visual analogue scales. In Experiment 2, the participants judged the attractiveness of female and male faces, while smelling an odour that was rated in Experiment 1 as more feminine (caramel), masculine (licorice) or when odourless water was presented. The results showed that the participants evaluated female faces as more attractive when the caramel odour was concurrently presented. By contrast, the participants evaluated the male faces as more attractive when the licorice odour was presented. These results highlight the importance of the synaesthetic associations between “gender” and odours on people's judgements of facial attractiveness. Male and female faces attractiveness enhanced by the odours.
Identity verification from both faces and voices can be error‐prone. Previous research has shown that faces and voices signal concordant information and cross‐modal unfamiliar face‐to‐voice matching is possible, albeit often with low accuracy. In the current study, we ask whether performance on a face or voice identity matching task can be improved by using multimodal stimuli which add a second modality (voice or face). We find that overall accuracy is higher for face matching than for voice matching. However, contrary to predictions, presenting one unimodal and one multimodal stimulus within a matching task did not improve face or voice matching compared to presenting two unimodal stimuli. Additionally, we find that presenting two multimodal stimuli does not improve accuracy compared to presenting two unimodal face stimuli. Thus, multimodal information does not improve accuracy. However, intriguingly, we find that cross‐modal face‐voice matching accuracy predicts voice matching accuracy but not face matching accuracy. This suggests cross‐modal information can nonetheless play a role in identity matching, and face and voice information combine to inform matching decisions. We discuss our findings in light of current models of person perception, and consider the implications for identity verification in security and forensic settings.
Hormones mediate life‐history trade‐offs. In female mammals, such trade‐offs have been studied predominantly in the contexts of oestrogen, progesterone and prolactin. We evaluate the hypothesis that prenatal and postnatal testosterone levels structure and regulate trade‐offs in females involving components of reproduction and survival. This hypothesis is predicated on the observation that testosterone confers competition‐related and survival‐related benefits, but also reproduction‐related costs, to female mammals. The hypothesis is supported by field and laboratory data from diverse non‐human animals, and data from healthy women. Most broadly, relatively low testosterone level in females has been associated with earlier, faster and higher offspring production, greater attractiveness to males, and reduced dominance or competitiveness, whereas higher testosterone level is associated with delayed and reduced reproduction but increased dominance, status, aggression, and resource accrual. The magnitude of testosterone‐mediated trade‐offs is expected to depend upon the strength of female–female competition, which represents some function of species‐specific ecology, behaviour and mating system. Testosterone‐associated trade‐offs have, until now, been virtually ignored in studies of female life history, reproductive physiology, evolutionary endocrinology, and female‐limited disease, probably due to researcher biases towards conceptualizing androgens as hormones with effects mainly restricted to males.
The chapter explains how the concepts of physical and sexual attraction differ from each other. The materials of the chapter describe the ideas and research on beauty and physical attractiveness.
The chapter demonstrates how attractive physical appearance influences overall interpersonal attraction. Evolutionary, ecological, social, cultural, and psychological perspectives show that the values and notions of physical attractiveness depend on many of these contextual factors. The studies reviewed in the chapter have demonstrated variability in preferences for physical appearances across cultures.
The chapter presents research findings that reveal the effects of familiarity, imprinting, and exposure on the impressions of how physically attractive a person looks. The features of physical attractiveness are sexually polymorphic and differ between genders. The sections of this chapter provide an overview of the qualities of physical appearance that make a person attractive, as well as multisensory qualities of attractive appearance, including visual, auditory, tactile-kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory modalities of sensation and perception.
The chapter describes in detail how people experience and express physical and sexual attraction. The last section of the chapter presents varieties of sexual attraction in love that depend on sexual identities, sexual orientations, and factors influencing diversity in sexual attraction.
The present study employed dictator game and ultimatum game to investigate the effect of facial attractiveness, vocal attractiveness and social interest in expressing positive (“I like you”) versus negative signals (“I don’t like you”) on decision making. Female participants played against male recipients in dictator game and ultimatum game while played against male proposers in ultimatum game. Results showed that participants offered recipients with attractive faces more money than recipients with unattractive faces. Participants also offered recipients with attractive voices more money than recipients with unattractive voices, especially under the positive social interest condition. Moreover, participants allocated more money to recipients who expressed positive social interest than those who expressed negative social interest, whereas they would also expect proposers who expressed positive social interest to offer them more money than proposers who expressed negative social interest. Overall, the results inform beauty premium for faces and voices on opposite-sex economic bargaining. Social interest also affects decision outcomes. However, the beauty premium and effect of social interest varies with participants’ roles.
The current study investigates the average effect: the tendency for humans to appreciate an averaged (face, bird, wristwatch, car, and so on) over an individual instance. The effect holds across cultures, despite varying conceptualizations of attractiveness. While much research has been conducted on the average effect in visual perception, much less is known about the extent to which this effect applies to language and speech. This study investigates the attractiveness of average speech rhythms in Dutch and Mandarin Chinese, two typologically different languages. This was tested in a series of perception experiments in either language in which native listeners chose the most attractive one from a pair of acoustically manipulated rhythms. For each language, two experiments were carried out to control for the potential influence of the acoustic manipulation on the average effect. The results confirm the average effect in both languages, and they do not exclude individual variation in the listeners’ perception of attractiveness. The outcomes provide a new crosslinguistic perspective and give rise to alternative explanations to the average effect.
İnsan sesi erkekte Bas, Bariton, Tenor; kadında ise Alto, Mezzo-Soprano ve Soprano olarak sınıflandırılmaktadır. İnsan ses tonu, iletişimin niteliğine ilişkin mesajlar taşımaktadır. Sembolik tüketim ise tüketicilerin satın aldıkları ürünlerle kendilerini ifade etme şekilleridir. Ses tonu, alıcıda pozitif veya negatif bir duygu yaratmaktadır. Bu duyguların ise sembolik tüketimle ilişkili olduğu söylenebilir. Günümüz pazarlama anlayışının temeli iletişimdir ve iletişimi etkileyen her bir faktörün ele alınması gerekmektedir. Bu bağlamda bu çalışma; ses tonu, pozitif ve negatif duygular ile sembolik tüketimin ilişkisini ele almaktadır. Bu amaçla 498 katılımcı ile anket çalışması yürütülmüştür. Ölçek puanlarının iki gruplu değişkenler açısından incelenmesi t testi, üç ve daha fazla gruplu değişkenler açısından incelenmesi ANOVA testi ile analiz edilmiştir. Elde edilen bulgulara göre Bas ses tonu pozitif duygular ve sembolik tüketimi pozitif etkilemektedir. Tenor ve Soprano ise pozitif duyguları negatif etkilemektedir. İşletmeler, özellikle sembolik ürünlerin tutundurma çalışmalarında veya satış personeli seçiminde ses tonunu dikkate alarak hareket etmelidirler. Bu çalışma, ele aldığı konusu ve elde ettiği sonuçlarıyla ilgili literatürde öncü bir çalışma niteliğindedir.
Judgments of physical attractiveness are based on appearance but are influenced by and influence more than just physical features of the face and body (e.g. clothing and personality traits). This is explored in a selective review of previous research, plus new analyses of data from three previously published studies: the Boston Couples Study, the Multiple Identities Questionnaire, and the Intimate Relationships Across Cultures Study, with implications for mental health. Self-ratings of attractiveness are inflated by self-esteem and confidence in self-halo effects. Partner-ratings are inflated by love and relationship satisfaction in partner-halo effects. Positive responses from others influence attractiveness-enhancing cycles, while negative responses influence attractiveness-deprecating cycles, with impacts on well-being. These influences are represented in a comprehensive Attractiveness Halo Model, which identifies Ten Components of Attractiveness that are inter-related, including physical, emotional, sexual, sensory, intellectual, behavioural, observer, situation, reciprocity, and time. Aspects of the model are supported by analyses of the three studies, generalising comprehensive attractiveness halo effects across time, identities, cultures, and relationship types.
Robust gender differences exist in the acoustic correlates of clearly articulated speech, with females, on average, producing speech that is acoustically and phonetically more distinct than that of males. This study investigates the relationship between several acoustic correlates of clear speech and subjective ratings of vocal attractiveness. Talkers were recorded producing vowels in /bVd/ context and sentences containing the four corner vowels. Multiple measures of working vowel space were computed from continuously sampled formant trajectories and were combined with measures of speech timing known to co-vary with clear articulation. Partial least squares regression (PLS-R) modeling was used to predict ratings of vocal attractiveness for male and female talkers based on the acoustic measures. PLS components that loaded on size and shape measures of working vowel space—including the quadrilateral vowel space area, convex hull area, and bivariate spread of formants—along with measures of speech timing were highly successful at predicting attractiveness in female talkers producing /bVd/ words. These findings are consistent with a number of hypotheses regarding human attractiveness judgments, including the role of sexual dimorphism in mate selection, the significance of traits signalling underlying health, and perceptual fluency accounts of preferences.
Evidence is presented showing that body fat distribution as measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is correlated with youthfulness, reproductive endocrinologic status, and long-term health risk in women. Three studies show that men judge women with low WHR as attractive. Study 1 documents that minor changes in WHRs of Miss America winners and Playboy playmates have occurred over the past 30-60 years. Study 2 shows that college-age men find female figures with low WHR more attractive, healthier, and of greater reproductive value than figures with a higher WHR. In Study 3, 25- to 85-year-old men were found to prefer female figures with lower WHR and assign them higher ratings of attractiveness and reproductive potential. It is suggested that WHR represents an important bodily feature associated with physical attractiveness as well as with health and reproductive potential. A hypothesis is proposed to explain how WHR influences female attractiveness and its role in mate selection.
Studies have shown that listeners are reasonably accurate in guessing adult age from voice. Our study was based on the premise that speakers' perceived age (rated by listeners) was more a function of their self-reported subjective andfor contextuul ages than their actual chronological ages. Interviews with 36 socially active, healthy men and women aged 59 to 92 years (M = 77 years) were recorded. Age-neutral extracts of the interviews were subjected to a series of assessments (i.e., age estimates, vocal characteristic judgments, and psychological trait attributions) by different groups of 5 12 young adults. Contrary to hypotheses, yet nonetheless important, was the finding that subjective and contextual ages were no better predictors of perceived age than was chronological age. Unexpectedly, and even more important, was the finding that how old a person sounded, rather than how old one was or even how old one felt, best predicted negative psychological judgments. Regression analyses showed that four vocal variables (unclear, strained, vowel elongation, and lack of coarse voice) predicted perceived age, which itself was correlated with five stereotypical traits (frail, ill-natured, subdued, incompetent, and dependent). Perceived age from voice might be a potent and hitherto underappreciated social factor influencing the dynam- ics of intergenerational communication. Some important implications for health concerns are discussed.
Hypothesized that men prefer women around their own age, but that as they grow older, men develop a preference for women who, although not absolutely younger, are progressively younger than themselves and that women begin with a preference for older men, and compared with men, show less variation in that preference over their life span. Six studies support this gender-differentiated prediction in age preferences expressed in 218 personal advertisements, 1,189 marriages from 2 US cities, 100 marriages in 1923, matrimonial advertisements from 2 European countries and India, 1,789 marriages recorded from 1913–1939 on a small island in the Philippines, and 213 singles advertisements placed by financially successful American women and men. Limitations of normative and evolutionary explanations of age preferences are considered. 30 commentaries and an author response follow. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Contemporary mate preferences can provide important clues to human reproductive history. Little is known about which characteristics people value in potential mates. Five predictions were made about sex differences in human mate preferences based on evolutionary conceptions of parental investment, sexual selection, human reproductive capacity, and sexual asymmetries regarding certainty of paternity versus maternity. The predictions centered on how each sex valued earning capacity, ambition— industriousness, youth, physical attractiveness, and chastity. Predictions were tested in data from 37 samples drawn from 33 countries located on six continents and five islands (total N = 10,047). For 27 countries, demographic data on actual age at marriage provided a validity check on questionnaire data. Females were found to value cues to resource acquisition in potential mates more highly than males. Characteristics signaling reproductive capacity were valued more by males than by females. These sex differences may reflect different evolutionary selection pressures on human males and females; they provide powerful cross-cultural evidence of current sex differences in reproductive strategies. Discussion focuses on proximate mechanisms underlying mate preferences, consequences for human intrasexual competition, and the limitations of this study.
Evolutionary, as well as cultural, pressures may contribute to our perceptions of facial attractiveness. Biologists predict
that facial symmetry should be attractive, because it may signal mate quality. We tested the prediction that facial symmetry
is attractive by manipulating the symmetry of individual faces and observing the effect on attractiveness, and by examining
whether natural variations in symmetry (between faces) correlated with perceived attractiveness. Attractiveness increased
when we increased symmetry, and decreased when we reduced symmetry, in individual faces (Experiment 1), and natural variations
in symmetry correlated significantly with attractiveness (Experiments 1 and 1A). Perfectly symmetric versions, made by blending
the normal and mirror images of each face, were preferred to less symmetric versions of the same faces (even when those versions
were also blends) (Experiments 1 and 2). Similar results were found when subjects judged the faces on appeal as a potential
life partner, suggesting that facial symmetry may affect human mate choice. We conclude that facial symmetry is attractive
and discuss the possibility that this preference for symmetry may be biologically based.
Developmental stability reflects the ability of individuals to cope with their environment during ontogeny given their genetic background. An inability to cope with environmental and genetic perturbations is reflected in elevated levels of fluctuating asymmetry and other measures of developmental instability. Both trait size and symmetry have been implicated as playing an important role in sexual selection, although their relative importance has never been assessed. We collected information on the relationship between success in sexual competition and size and asymmetry, respectively, to assess the relative importance of these two factors in sexual selection. Studies that allowed comparison of the relationships for the same traits' size and symmetry and success in sexual competition constituted the data, which totaled 73 samples from 33 studies of 29 species. The average sample-size weighted correlation coefficients between mating success or attractiveness and size and asymmetry, respectively, were used as measures of effect size in a meta-anatysis. Analysis was conducted on samples, studies, and species separately. We found evidence of an overall larger effect of symmetry at the species level of analysis, but similar effects at the sample or study levels. The difference in effect size for character size and character symmetry was larger for secondary sexual characters than for ordinary morphological characters at the level of analysis of samples. The results lend support to the conclusion that symmetry plays an important general role in sexual selection, especially symmetry of secondary sexual characters.
The increasing availability of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a research, and even clinical, tool in speech production makes possible a wide range of quantitative methods in vocal tract measurement. In these initial stages of application, it is essential that the limits of the method be identified. The present investigation was designed to apply the techniques of digital image analysis and volumetric measurement to MRls obtained for the vocal tract during production of continuant speech sounds, and to apply these measures to a well-established and thoroughly tested model of acoustic transmission (Stevens & House, 1955). The results demonstrated that, although there were several sources of relatively large error and measurement bias, the vocal tract volumes obtained from MRIs were significantly predictive of vocal tract resonance frequencies. These results are discussed with respect to limits and potential for future application of MRI to speech production research.
Evidence is presented showing that body fat distribution as measured by waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is correlated with youthfulness, reproductive endocrinologic status, and long-term health risk in women. Three studies show that men judge women with low WHR as attractive. Study 1 documents that minor changes in WHRs of Miss America winners and Playboy playmates have occurred over the past 30-60 years. Study 2 shows that college-age men find female figures with low WHR more attractive, healthier, and of greater reproductive value than figures with a higher WHR. In Study 3, 25- to 85-year-old men were found to prefer female figures with lower WHR and assign them higher ratings of attractiveness and reproductive potential. It is suggested that WHR represents an important bodily feature associated with physical attractiveness as well as with health and reproductive potential. A hypothesis is proposed to explain how WHR influences female attractiveness and its role in mate selection.
This study examines the ability of listeners to judge speaker height and weight from speech samples. Although previous investigations indicate that listeners are consistent in estimating body characteristics, it is not known which speech signal parameters are being used by the listeners for such estimates. Therefore, a series of listening tests was carried out in which male and female listeners judged the height and weight from male and female speakers reading isolated words and two text paragraphs. Both speaker sex and listener sex turned out to be important factors: Significant correlations between estimated height/weight and actual height/weight were found only for male speakers. The majority of these estimates came from the male listeners. Neither male nor female listeners, however, were able to estimate female speaker height or weight. Regression analysis involving F0, formant frequencies, energy below 1 kHz, and speech rate showed no significant correlations between these parameters and actually measured speaker height and weight, the only exception being a significant correlation between male speaker weight and speech rate. Furthermore, regression data suggested that the listeners (correctly) used speech rate information in judging male speaker weight, whereas low F0 and formant frequency values (wrongly) were taken to indicate large speaker body dimensions.
Changes in magnitude and variability of duration, fundamental frequency, formant frequencies, and spectral envelope of children's speech are investigated as a function of age and gender using data obtained from 436 children, ages 5 to 17 years, and 56 adults. The results confirm that the reduction in magnitude and within-subject variability of both temporal and spectral acoustic parameters with age is a major trend associated with speech development in normal children. Between ages 9 and 12, both magnitude and variability of segmental durations decrease significantly and rapidly, converging to adult levels around age 12. Within-subject fundamental frequency and formant-frequency variability, however, may reach adult range about 2 or 3 years later. Differentiation of male and female fundamental frequency and formant frequency patterns begins at around age 11, becoming fully established around age 15. During that time period, changes in vowel formant frequencies of male speakers is approximately linear with age, while such a linear trend is less obvious for female speakers. These results support the hypothesis of uniform axial growth of the vocal tract for male speakers. The study also shows evidence for an apparent overshoot in acoustic parameter values, somewhere between ages 13 and 15, before converging to the canonical levels for adults. For instance, teenagers around age 14 differ from adults in that, on average, they show shorter segmental durations and exhibit less within-subject variability in durations, fundamental frequency, and spectral envelope measures.
Evolutionary psychology suggests that a woman's sexual attractiveness is based on cues of health and reproductive potential. In recent years, research has focused on the ratio of the width of the waist to the width of the hips (the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). A low WHR (i.e. a curvaceous body) is believed to correspond to the optimal fat distribution for high fertility, and so this shape should be highly attractive. In this paper we present evidence that weight scaled for height (the body mass index (BMI)) is the primary determinant of sexual attractiveness rather than WHR. BMI is also strongly linked to health and reproductive potential. Furthermore, we show how covariation of apparent BMI and WHR in previous studies led to the overestimation of the importance of WHR in the perception of female attractiveness. Finally, we show how visual cues, such as the perimeter-area ratio (PAR), can provide an accurate and reliable index of an individual's BMI and could be used by an observer to differentiate between potential partners.
Several studies have found body and facial symmetry as well as attractiveness to be human mate choice criteria. These characteristics are presumed to signal developmental stability. Human body odour has been shown to influence female mate choice depending on the immune system, but the question of whether smell could signal general mate quality, as do other cues, was not addressed in previous studies. We compared ratings of body odour, attractiveness, and measurements of facial and body asymmetry of 16 male and 19 female subjects. Subjects wore a T-shirt for three consecutive nights under controlled conditions. Opposite-sex raters judged the odour of the T-shirts and another group evaluated portraits of the subjects for attractiveness. We measured seven bilateral traits of the subject's body to assess body asymmetry. Facial asymmetry was examined by distance measurements of portrait photographs. The results showed a significant positive correlation between facial attractiveness and sexiness of body odour for female subjects. We found positive relationships between body odour and attractiveness and negative ones between smell and body asymmetry for males only if female odour raters were in the most fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. The outcomes are discussed in the light of different male and female reproductive strategies.
Magnetic resonance imaging was used to quantify the vocal tract morphology of 129 normal humans, aged 2-25 years. Morphometric data, including midsagittal vocal tract length, shape, and proportions, were collected using computer graphic techniques. There was a significant positive correlation between vocal tract length and body size (either height or weight). The data also reveal clear differences in male and female vocal tract morphology, including changes in overall vocal tract length and the relative proportions of the oral and pharyngeal cavity. These sex differences are not evident in children, but arise at puberty, suggesting that they are part of the vocal remodeling process that occurs during puberty in males. These findings have implications for speech recognition, speech forensics, and the evolution of the human speech production system, and provide a normative standard for future studies of human vocal tract morphology and development.
Morphological modifications of vocal anatomy are widespread among vertebrates, and the investigation of the physiological mechanisms and adaptive functions of such variants is an important focus of research into the evolution of communication. The "descended larynx" of adult humans has traditionally been considered unique to our species, representing an adaptation for articulate speech, and debate concerning the position of the larynx in extinct hominids assumes that a lowered larynx is diagnostic of speech and language. Here, we use bioacoustic analyses of vocalizing animals, together with anatomical analyses of functional morphology, to document descended larynges in red and fallow deer. The resting position of the larynx in males of these species is similar to that in humans, and, during roaring, red-deer stags lower the larynx even further, to the sternum. These findings indicate that laryngeal descent is not uniquely human and has evolved at least twice in independent lineages. We suggest that laryngeal descent serves to elongate the vocal tract, allowing callers to exaggerate their perceived body size by decreasing vocal-tract resonant frequencies. Vocal-tract elongation is common in birds and is probably present in additional mammals. Size exaggeration provides a non-linguistic alternative hypothesis for the descent of the larynx in human evolution.
The larynx is an hormonal target, Tone of the voice depends on the fact that there is or there is not male hormones, or on the presence of female hormones ? At menopause, estrogens and gestagens may fade, and androgens may appear. Both are in harmony, But does the fact that estro-progestative hormones disappear at menopause allow androgenic action ? Often androgens can be converted in estrogen and estron-sulfate, The voice, then, may stay feminine, Otherwise, the androgenic effects will affect the striated muscles of the vocal fold, the thickness of the stratified epithelium and the strength of the larynx, Of 100 women, our study has shown that 17 had a menopausal voice syndrome with lack of intensity, a voice fatigue, a narrow register The hormonal replacement treatment is the treatment for voice professional, The singing voice, the speaking voice recover, For each women, the specific treatment has to be adapted with vitamins and hormonal therapy to preserve the harmony of the voice and the being.
Evidence has accumulated in recent years supporting the hypothesis that both facial and bodily physical attractiveness in humans are certifications of developmental and hormonal health. Such evidence indicates that physical attractiveness is an honest or Zahavian signal of phenotypic and genetic quality. The hypothesis that physical beauty connotes health was first proposed by Westermarck and was discussed later by Ellis and Symons. It has been suggested that facial attractiveness in women is a deceptive signal of youth, unrelated to phenotypic and genetic quality. This sensory-bias or super-stimulus hypothesis is not supported by this study of men’s ratings of the attractiveness of photographs of 92 nude women. Independent ratings of photographs of faces, fronts with faces covered, and backs of the same women are significantly, positively correlated. The correlation between the ratings of different photos implies that women’s faces and external bodies comprise a single ornament of honest mate value, apparently constructed during puberty by estrogen and also probably by developmental adaptations for symmetry. Thus, women’s physical attractiveness in face and body honestly signal hormonal and perhaps developmental health.
Psychological evidence suggests that sex differences in morphology have been modified by sexual selection so as to attract mates (intersexual selection) or intimidate rivals (intrasexual selection). Women compete with each other for high quality husbands by advertising reproductive value in terms of the distribution of fat reserves and by exaggerating morphological indicators of youthfulness such as a small nose and small feet and pale, hairless skin. Men's physical appearance tends to communicate social dominance, which has the combined effects of intimidating reproductive rivals and attracting mates. In addition to their attractiveness and intimidatory effects, human secondary sexual characters also provide cues to hormonal status and phenotypic quality consistent with the good genes model of sexual selection (which includes parasite resistance). Low waist-hip ratio is sexually attractive in women and indicates a high estrogen/testosterone ratio (which favors reproductive function). Facial attractiveness provides honest cues to health and mate value. The permanently enlarged female breast appears to have evolved under the influence of both the good genes and the runaway selection mechanisms. The male beard is not obviously related to phenotypic quality and may have evolved through a process of runaway intersexual selection.
Body weight, length, and vocal tract length were measured for 23 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) of various sizes using radiographs and computer graphic techniques. linear predictive coding analysis of tape-recorded threat vocalizations were used to determine vocal tract resonance frequencies ("formants") for the same animals. A new acoustic variable is proposed, "formant dispersion," which should theoretically depend upon vocal tract length. Formant dispersion is the averaged difference between successive formant frequencies, and was found to be closely tied to both vocal tract length and body size. Despite the common claim that voice fundamental frequency (F0) provides an acoustic indication of body size, repeated investigations have failed to support such a relationship in many vertebrate species including humans. Formant dispersion, unlike voice pitch, is proposed to be a reliable predictor of body size in macaques, and probably many other species.
Why are animal displays so complex? In contexts ranging from courtship
and mating to parent-offspring communication to predator deterrence,
biological signals often involve a number of different visual, auditory
and/or olfactory components. Previous models of communication have
tended to ignore this complexity, assuming that only one kind of display
is available. Here, a new game-theoretical model of signalling is
described, in which signallers may use more than one display to
advertise their qualities. Additional displays may serve to enhance the
accuracy with which receivers assess a single quality (the `backup
signal' hypothesis), or to provide information about different qualities
(the `multiple message' hypothesis). Multiple signals are shown to be
stable, even when multiple receiver preferences entail significant
costs, provided that signalling costs are strongly accelerating. In such
cases, signallers bias their investment towards more efficient forms of
signal, but not to the exclusion of other display types. When costs are
not strongly accelerating, by contrast, individual signallers employ
only a single display at equilibrium. If different signals provide
information about different qualities, however, then the equilibrium may
feature alternative signalling strategies, with signallers who excel in
one quality employing one kind of display, and those who excel in
another quality employing another kind.
Female waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) has been proposed by evolutionary psychologists to be an important component of human male mate choice, because this trait is thought to provide a reliable cue to a woman's reproductive value. Based largely on work conducted in industrialized societies, the claim has been made that preferences for low WHR are culturally invariant. Presumably, the preferences evolved before the advent of agriculture, making foraging populations the best place to test the hypothesis. This was done with the Hadza of Tanzania, who were shown figures of females that varied by weight and waist-to-hip ratio. Low WHR was not preferred. Hadza men did not consider waist-to-hip ratio when expressing preferences for mates. Instead, they were most interested in the weight of potential partners. Research by others with subjects who practice swidden agriculture also revealed that low WHR was not preferred. The data from the Hadza coupled with the information derived from this horticultural group bring into question whether preferences for low WHR are culturally invariant.
Symmetry may act as a marker of phenotypic and genetic quality and is preferred during mate selection in a variety of species. Measures of human body symmetry correlate with attractiveness, but studies manipulating human face images report a preference for asymmetry. These results may reflect unnatural feature shapes and changes in skin textures introduced by image processing. When the shape of facial features is varied (with skin textures held constant), increasing symmetry of face shape increases ratings of attractiveness for both male and female faces. These findings imply facial symmetry may have a positive impact on mate selection in humans.
Obtained 115 female undergraduates' somatic preferences in judging the male and female body and related them to Ss' own personality and background characteristics. Ss made paired comparison preference ratings of a set of 15 male and a set of 15 female profile silhouettes which varied in chest/breast, buttocks, and leg size. The group as a whole selected a male silhouette of moderate size (thickness) with small buttocks as the most attractive male physique. A moderate-sized male silhouette with a somewhat larger chest was also favored. This finding gives only partial support to the cultural belief that women prefer large chests in men, since the large-chested or "Atlas"-type physique received only slight endorsement. A moderate-sized female silhouette with small buttocks was chosen as the preferred female figure. In addition, an evenly proportioned and moderately built female silhouette was also highly valued. Larger buttocked male and female silhouettes were clearly disliked, but less definite preference patterns were obtained with regard to leg size. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Originally published in
Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1995, Vol 40(7), 711. Replies to comments made in the S. Mendoza and P. Shaver review (see record
2004-17632-002) of the present author's book,
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (see record 199497188-000). Within the broad context of seeming agreement, Buss also notes disagreement. He argues that there is strong evidence that both men and women have a complex repertoire of mating strategies that includes short-term mating and long-term mating. He also answers Mendoza's analysis of two areas in which initial formulations of hypotheses anchored in sexual strategies theory did not pan out exactly as expected empirically and had to be modified--men's concern about chastity as a potential solution to the problem of paternity uncertainty and women's desire for older men as a solution to the problem of resource acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A previous study by the authors showed that the body scent of men who have greater body bilateral symmetry is rated as more attractive by normally ovulating (non-pill-using) women during the period of highest fertility based on day within the menstrual cycle. Women in low-fertility phases of the cycle and women using hormone-based con-traceptives do not show this pattern. The current study replicated these findings with a larger sample and statistically controlled for men's hygiene and other factors that were not controlled in the first study. The current study also examined women's scent attrac-tiveness to men and found no evidence that men prefer the scent of symmetric women. We propose that the scent of symmetry is an honest signal of phenotypic and genetic quality in the human male, and chemical candidates are discussed. In both sexes, facial attractiveness (as judged from photos) appears to predict body scent attractiveness to the opposite sex. Women's preference for the scent associated with men's facial attrac-tiveness is greatest when their fertility is highest across the menstrual cycle. The results overall suggest that women have an evolved preference for sires with good genes. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.
Two studies examined the effects of attractiveness of voice and physical appearance on impressions of personality. Subject-senders were videotaped as they read a standard-content text (Study 1) or randomly selected texts (Study 2). Judges rated the senders' vocal attractiveness from the auditory portion of the tape and their physical attractiveness from the visual portion of the tape. Other judges rated the senders' personality on the basis of their voice, face, or face plus voice. Senders with more attractive voices were rated more favorably in both the voice and face plus voice conditions; senders with more attractive faces were rated more favorably in both the face and face plus voice conditions. The effects of both vocal and physical attractiveness were more pronounced in the single channels (voice condition and face condition, respectively) than in the multiple channel (face plus voice condition). Possible antecedents and consequences of the vocal attractiveness stereotype are discussed. p]Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
Shakespeare (King Lear, Act V, Sc. 3)
Ratings of the attractiveness and babyishness of the voices of 124 stimulus persons were obtained. These were compared to impressions provided by judges on the basis of vocal information only; self-descriptions provided by the stimulus persons; and descriptions of the stimulus persons provided by close friends. The vocal attractiveness stereotype was generally replicated, and the effects of vocal attractiveness and babyishness on impressions were found to be independent of one another. Sex differences in the impact of vocal attractiveness on perceptions were also revealed. Analyses did not reveal an impact of vocal attractiveness on self or friend ratings.
Males of many animals have more than a single exaggerated secondary sexual character, but inter-specific variability in the number of ornaments has never been explained. We examine three hypotheses that may account for the presence of multiple ornaments. First, the multiple message hypothesis proposes that each display reflects a single property of the overall quality of an animal. This is likely to be the case for ornaments that respond to condition on different time scales. Second, the redundant signal hypothesis suggests that each ornament gives a partial indication of condition. Females pay attention to several sex traits because in combination they provide a better estimate of general condition than does any single ornament. The redundant signal hypothesis predicts that (i) multiple ornaments should be particularly common among taxa with relatively uncostly and fine-tuned female choice, and (ii) females pay equal attention to the expression of all the secondary sex traits in order to obtain an estimate of overall male condition. Finally, the unreliable signal hypothesis argues that some ornaments are unreliable indicators of overall condition and are only maintained because they are relatively uncostly to produce and there is a weak female preference for them. This predicts that (i) multiple sexual ornaments should be particularly common in taxa with the most intense sexual selection (i.e. lekking and other polygynous taxa), and (ii) there should be more evidence for condition dependence in ornaments of species with single as opposed to multiple ornaments. Both the latter predictions are supported by data on feather ornaments in birds.
Two studies tested the hypothesis that adults with childlike voices would be perceived as having childlike psychological attributes. In Study 1, United States undergraduates listened to either 16 male or 16 female speakers reciting the English alphabet, and they rated psychological traits and vocal qualities of each speaker. The results revealed that speakers with vocal qualities perceived as childlike were also perceived as weaker, less competent, and warmer than their mature sounding counterparts, and these effects were independent of speakers' feminine vocal qualities, sex, and perceived age. Study 2 replicated Study 1, employing Korean undergraduates as subjects. The results revealed significant agreement between United States and Korean subjects' ratings of the United States speakers' traits. Moreover, the impact on trait ratings of a childlike voice was very similar for Korean and United States subjects. The results are discussed within a theoretical framework which argues that perceptions of adults with childlike voices may derive from the species-wide adaptive value of analogous reactions to the young.
We examined effects of attractiveness and maturity of face and voice on interpersonal impressions. Higher attractiveness, both facial and vocal, resulted in more positive impressions. However, facial attractiveness influenced primarily interpersonal dimensions (extroversion, warmth, and agreeableness) whereas vocal attractiveness influenced primarily more private dimensions (neuroticism and conscientiousness). Higher maturity, both facial and vocal, resulted in impressions of higher dominance and lower warmth and agreeableness. Higher facial maturity resulted in somewhat less positive impressions whereas higher vocal maturity did not. Consistent with this difference, higher vocal maturity was perceived as more attractive whereas higher facial maturity was not. Finally, the effect of a specific quality (attractiveness or maturity) of face or voice was often moderated by other qualities of the same or different channel.
We measured salivary testosterone levels and voice pitch, or fundamental frequency,among 61 male and 88 female college students. Higher levels of testosterone were significantlyassociated with lower pitched voices among males but not among females. The magnitude of theeffect was approximately the same as the magnitude of other relationships that have beenreported between testosterone and behavior. There are two plausible explanations of a linkbetween testosterone and pitch. One explanation is physiological, in which testosterone changesthe bulk, length, or tension of the vocal folds. The other is psychological, in which testosteroneaffects the vocal style that an individual uses as part of a social interaction strategy.
Early work on loud calling in mammals emphasized the importance of dynamic characteristics such as calling rate as cues to fitness and fighting ability. In contrast, little is known of the potential for fine-scaled acoustic cues to provide receivers with direct information on fitness. Fundamental frequency has typically been considered a good potential indicator of body size in the literature, but resonance frequencies (formants), which should be constrained by the length of the vocal tract, have received less attention. We conducted a detailed acoustic analysis on an extensive database of roars from red deer stags, Cervus elaphus, in a free-ranging population to investigate which variables provided honest information on age, body weight and reproductive success. Although fundamental frequency was higher in young stags than in adults, it did not decrease with body weight within adults and source cues (i.e. those generated by the larynx) in general did not provide clear information on fitness-related characteristics. In contrast, minimum formant frequencies, reached during the part of the roar when the mobile larynx is most fully retracted towards the sternum, decreased with body weight and age and were strongly negatively correlated with our index of reproductive success. Such production-related acoustic cues to body size and fitness, rendered honest by an anatomical constraint limiting the downward movement of the larynx, provide receivers with accurate information that could be used to assess rivals and choose mates. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Morphological features such as overall body fat, body fat distribution, as measured by waist-to-hip ratio, breast size, and hip width have been proposed to influence female attractiveness and desirability. To determine how the variations of these morphological features interact and affect the judgment of female age, attractiveness, and desirability for romantic relationships, two studies were conducted. In Study 1, college-age men rated female figures differing in body weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and breast size for age, attractiveness, health, and desirability for short-and long-term relationships. Female figures with slender bodies, low waist-to-hip ratios, and large brasts were rated as most attractive, feminine looking, healthy, and desirable for casual and long-term romantic relationships. In Study 2, female figures with similar body weight and waist-to-hip ratios but differing hip widths and breast sizes were rated for the same attributes as in Study 1. Female figures with large breasts and narrow hips were rated as most youthful, attractive, and desirable for casual and long-term romantic relationships. It seems that larger body size, a high waist-to-hip ratio, and larger hips make the female figure appear older, unattractive, and less desirable for engaging in romantic relationships. Discussion focuses on the functional significance of interactions among various morphological features in determining female attractiveness.
Animal displays are often complex, involving a variety of different visual, auditory and/or olfactory components. This observation poses a problem for models of signalling based on the handicap principle, which predict that displays generally serve to advertise quality, because it is not obvious why honest advertisement should require multiple signals. One possible explanation is that complex, multi-component displays provide information about many different aspects of the quality or condition of the signaller. Here, a game-theoretical model of signalling is described in which multiple signals serve to advertise multiple qualities in this way. When many different kinds of signal are available, there can be no guarantee that a particular signal will be less costly for a signaller of higher overall value. Nevertheless, the model demonstrates that honest signalling using multiple displays can be stable; multiple signal equilibria exist at which receivers acquire accurate information about the overall value of signallers. It is also shown that, at such equilibria, there need be no one-to-one relationship between signals and qualities. Even if the cost of a particular signal trait depends only on one particular quality, its expression is likely to be influenced by other qualities as well.
Patterns in the data on human sexuality support the hypothesis that the bases of sexual emotions are products of natural selection. Most generally, the universal existence of laws, rules, and gossip about sex, the pervasive interest in other people's sex lives, the widespread seeking of privacy for sexual intercourse, and the secrecy that normally permeates sexual conduct imply a history of reproductive competition. More specifically, the typical differences between men and women in sexual feelings can be explained most parsimoniously as resulting from the extraordinarily different reproductive opportunities and constraints males and females normally encountered during the course of evolutionary history. Men are more likely than women to desire multiple mates; to desire a variety of sexual partners; to experience sexual jealousy of a spouse irrespective of specific circumstances; to be sexually aroused by the sight of a member of the other sex; to experience an autonomous desire for sexual intercourse; and to evaluate sexual desirability primarily on the bases of physical appearance and youth.
The evolutionary causes of human sexuality have been obscured by attempts to find harmony in natural creative processes and human social life and to view sex differences as complementary. The human female's capacity for orgasm and the loss of estrus, for example, have been persistently interpreted as marriage-maintaining adaptations. Available evidence is more consistent with the view that few sex differences in sexuality are complementary, that many aspects of sexuality undermine marriage, and that sexuality is less a unifying than a divisive force in human affairs.
The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential effectiveness of digital speech processing and pattern recognition techniques for the automatic recognition of gender from speech. In part I Coarse Analysis [K. Wu and D. G. Childers, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 1828-1840 (1991)] various feature vectors and distance measures were examined to determine their appropriateness for recognizing a speaker's gender from vowels, unvoiced fricatives, and voiced fricatives. One recognition scheme based on feature vectors extracted from vowels achieved 100% correct recognition of the speaker's gender using a database of 52 speakers (27 male and 25 female). In this paper a detailed, fine analysis of the characteristics of vowels is performed, including formant frequencies, bandwidths, and amplitudes, as well as speaker fundamental frequency of voicing. The fine analysis used a pitch synchronous closed-phase analysis technique. Detailed formant features, including frequencies, bandwidths, and amplitudes, were extracted by a closed-phase weighted recursive least-squares method that employed a variable forgetting factor, i.e., WRLS-VFF. The electroglottograph signal was used to locate the closed-phase portion of the speech signal. A two-way statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test the differences between gender features. The relative importance of grouped vowel features was evaluated by a pattern recognition approach. Numerous interesting results were obtained, including the fact that the second formant frequency was a slightly better recognizer of gender than fundamental frequency, giving 98.1% versus 96.2% correct recognition, respectively. The statistical tests indicated that the spectra for female speakers had a steeper slope (or tilt) than that for males. The results suggest that redundant gender information was imbedded in the fundamental frequency and vocal tract resonance characteristics. The feature vectors for female voices were observed to have higher within-group variations than those for male voices. The data in this study were also used to replicate portions of the Peterson and Barney [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 24, 175-184 (1952)] study of vowels for male and female speakers.
The purpose of this research was to investigate the potential effectiveness of digital speech processing and pattern recognition techniques for the automatic recognition of gender from speech segments. In this paper "coarse" acoustic coefficients (autocorrelation, linear prediction, cepstrum, and reflection) were used to form test and reference templates for vowels, voiced fricatives, and unvoiced fricatives. The effects of different distance measures, filter orders, recognition schemes, and vowels and fricatives were comparatively assessed to determine their effectiveness for the task of gender recognition from speech segments. The results showed that most of the acoustic parameters worked well for gender recognition. A within-gender and within-subject averaging technique was important for generating appropriate test and reference templates. The Euclidean distance measure appeared to be the most robust as well as the simplest of the distance measures. The results from this study implied that the gender information is time invariant, phoneme independent, and speaker independent for a given gender. One recognition scheme achieved 100% correct speaker gender classification for a database of 52 talkers (27 male and 25 female). In part II of this paper [D.G. Childers and K. Wu, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 1841-1856 (1991); hereafter referred to as paper II] the detailed features of ten vowels that appeared responsible for distinguishing a speaker's gender were examined statistically. Included in paper II is a replication of part of the classical study of Peterson and Barney [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 24, 175-184 (1952)] of vowel characteristics.
ABSTRACTS
Utterances were produced in two gender role realisations by male‐to‐female trans‐sexuals. An acoustic analysis of 17 parameters was carried out and results were compared intra‐individually. It appears that, in spite of anatomical constraints, subjects were able to realise a number of vocal characteristics that are known to add to a feminine voice quality in the female speaking mode. In a subsequent perceptual task, male and female versions of some speech samples were presented pairwise to a panel of listeners who were able to identify the intended speaker sex mode correctly. Perceptual results thus corroborate acoustic data.
Après avoir demandé à des transsexuels masculins‐féminins de produire des énoncés en assumant des rǒles, tantǒt masculins, tantǒt féminins, l'on s'est livré à une analyse acoustique de dix‐sept paramètres et à une comparaison des résultats au sein des prestations de chaque individu. Il s'est révélé qu'en dépit de contraintes anatomiques, les sujets étaient capables de réaliser un certain nombre de caractéristiques vocales dont on sait qu'elles ajoutent une qualité de voix féminine au mode d'élocution féminin. Lors d'un test de perception qui a suivi, les versions masculines et féminines d'un certain nombre d'échantillons d'énoncés ont été présentées deux par deux à un jury d'auditeurs, qui ont pu identifier correctement les modes sexuels voulus par les locuteurs.
Männlich‐weiblich Transsexuelle haben in zwei Geschlechtsrollen Äusserungen vorgetragen. Akustische Analysen von siebzehn Parametern und intra‐individuelle Vergleiche der Ergebnisse wurden gemacht. Die Versuchspersonen konnten anscheinend trotz anatomischer Einschränkungen eine Anzahl von Stimmeigenschaften verwirklichen, die bekanntlich in der weiblichen Sprechrolle zu einer weiblichen Stimmqualität beitragen. In einer darauffolgenden perzeptuellen Aufgabe wurden männliche und weibliche Fassungen einiger Sprechauszüge paarweise einer Gruppe von Hörern vorgespielt, die beabsichtigte Geschlechtsrolle des Sprechers erkennen konnten.
This study compared samples of less-masculine-sounding (LMS) and more-masculine-sounding (MMS) male speech to identify acoustic characteristics, other than fundamental frequency, that might contribute to the perception of these categories. In the first phase, audiorecorded speech samples provided by 35 males were presented to 35 female listeners in a paired-comparison perceptual experiment. Nineteen of the male speech samples were judged reliably to fall within the LMS or MMS categories. Within those 19 samples, 8 speakers (4 LMS and 4 MMS) exhibited similar distributions of habitual fundamental frequency values in connected speech and in sustained phonation. In the second phase of the experiment, various acoustic measures of these eight connected speech samples were conducted. Significant differences between measures of fundamental frequency contours, vowel formant midpoint values, and in the first, third and fourth spectral moments of two fricatives were revealed. These findings may be useful in creating stylized synthetic speech that varies on the dimension of masculinity, and they may have clinical relevance for patients wishing to modify the perception of masculinity invoked by their speech.
