BrainStuff Classics: Why Do You Hate the Sound of Your Own Voice?

Your voice sounds different in recordings than it does to your own ears, but why? Learn the science behind this phenomena in today's classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
I'm Lauren Vocabam, and today's episode is another classic from
our erstwhile host, Christian Sager. He's here to explain why
we're all weirded out by the sound of our own voice. Hi,

(00:22):
I'm Christian Sager and welcome to brain Stuff. Have you
ever heard a recording of yourself played back and thought?
Why do I sound like that? It happens to me
every time I listen to this podcast. It is weird, right,
Usually our voices sound deeper, but when played back the
way everyone else hears them, they're higher and tenure. Why

(00:42):
does it sound so different and why do we hate
it so much? Well, the sound of your voice reaches
your inner ear in two different ways. The vocal folds
in your throat vibrate, creating sound waves that travel through
the air, But those sound vibrations also conduct through your body,
particularly through your skull and bones. Our skulls lower the

(01:03):
frequency of these later vibrations as they bounce around inside
our throat, mouth, and neck before reaching the ears cochlea
through the fleshy tissue in our heads. The surrounding bones
spread out the vibrations lower their pitch and enhance the
lower frequency vibrations, so your voice sounds fuller and deeper.
When we hear our voice played back on a recording,

(01:25):
we don't get it filtered through flesh and bone. What
we're hearing, then, is only the air conducted sound of
our voice as waves of pressure. These vibrations are caught
by our outer ears and then transmitted through our ear drums,
where they vibrate three bony ousticles before reaching the cochlea.
In both cases, the cochlea converts these vibrations into impulses

(01:48):
that are sent to the brain. But with the elimination
of the bone conducted sound, we end up hearing our
voice the way everyone else hears it. Most of us
have had this experience, and we hate it. We're used
to the combination of the air conducted and bone conducted
sounds of our voice. It's what we've lived with all
of our lives, so of course it's unsettling to hear

(02:11):
something so different than what we're used to. But remember this,
This is how your friends have been hearing you your
whole life. To them, it is normal. So just relax
and rest easy, knowing that everyone cringes at the sound
of their own voice, even Morgan Freeman, well, everyone except
Morgan Freeman. Today's episode was written by Christian and produced

(02:37):
by Tyler. Playing for more wellness and lots of other
topics that will shake you to the bone, visit our
home planet, how stuff works dot com.