The Voices You Can Trust

When confronted with a voice for the first time people form spontaneous impressions about the speaker’s characteristics. For example, studies have found that people associate specific physical characteristics (e.g., attractiveness) and psychological characteristics (e.g., dominance) to specific voices. Importantly, people form relatively similar impressions based on a voice such that the same voice leads to similar impressions by different people. One consistent finding in the literature is that a deep male voice—that is a voice with thicker and longer vocal folds—is typically perceived as more attractive and dominant.

Source: Image by Jake Aldridge from Pixabay.

One important question is how valid formed impressions based on a speaker’s voice actually are. If we associate specific characteristics with specific voices, do the speakers actually have these characteristics? In the case of a speaker’s sex, for instance, people’s impressions are typically very accurate (i.e., we are overall quite good at recognizing to which sex a person belongs based on their voice). In contrast, not much is known about how accurate impressions, based on a speaker’s voice are concerning more psychological characteristics of the speaker.

In a recent study, we investigated how men’s voice pitch is related to actual and perceived trustworthiness across domains. Specifically, we recorded the voices of 181 men (speakers) and assessed their trustworthiness (a) in general, (b) in an economic situation, and (c) in a relationship. Going from actual to perceived trustworthiness, we then asked male and female raters to indicate—by just listening to the speakers’ voices—whether they would trust the speakers (a) in general, (b) with money, or (c) with regard to cheating in a relationship.

Are (male) voice characteristics related to actual and/or perceived trustworthiness?
With regard to actual trustworthiness, we did not find any link between a speaker’s voice pitch and general or economic trustworthiness. However, we found that men with a lower voice pitch (as compared to men with a higher voice pitch) reported more often to have cheated in a relationship.

With regard to perceived trustworthiness, we again did not find any link between voice pitch and general trustworthiness. However, we found that men with a deeper voice pitch were rated as more trustworthy in an economic situation (but remember that this impression does not correspond to the findings concerning actual economic trustworthiness). Mirroring the findings concerning actual trustworthiness, by contrast, men with a higher voice pitch were rated as more trustworthy in a relationship. And further analyses revealed that particularly female raters were relatively accurate in judging which speakers cheated in a relationship.

Source: Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay.

Potential explanations of our findings
On the one hand, our findings suggest that a man’s voice pitch is not a good indicator of his trustworthiness in general or in an economic situation, even though others (wrongly) form impressions based on the voice, at least in an economic situation. On the other hand, we found that a deeper male voice is related to who reports having cheated in a relationship, that others (correctly) form impressions based on the voice in this domain, and that particularly women can judge relatively accurately which men report that they have cheated in a relationship.

From an evolutionary perspective, one could argue that it is relevant for women, in particular, to know which men one can trust in a relationship. Another explanation for our findings is that men with deeper voices just have more access to (attractive) cheating opportunities—as mentioned above, deep voices are perceived as more attractive and more dominant in men. In other words, attractive and dominant men could just have more tempting options which might explain the relation between voice pitch and cheating in our study.

Importantly, our study has several limitations. For example, we asked the men to self-report whether they have cheated or not, so one should interpret the findings cautiously. Similarly, we did not address many related questions, such as how accurate the impressions based on female voices are. So, future research might further investigate which vocal differences are related to actual or perceived differences in psychological characteristics.