September 7, 2011 • 24 mins
Why do men have Adam's apples? What determines the pitch of your voice? What deepens men's voices? Tune in as Caroline and Cristen get to the bottom of what makes your voice sound the way it does -- and what it says about you -- in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From house Stop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen. I'm Caroline. So there was a
(00:21):
recent comment left on the Facebook fan page for Stuff
Mom Never Told You, which, if you aren't a fan yet,
you should do that right now stop listening to this
podcast to the Facebook. Um. But this we have to
quote this comment because it relates a lot to what
we're talking about today. And this is from a guy
(00:43):
named Morgan, and he says, Okay, I've been wondering for
a while, do you guys use a different voice when
you're making the show. I've heard hints and glimmers of
a Southern accent, but I think I speak for all
of us when I say you should do one podcast
in your natural voice. So Caroline, stop, stop with your
(01:03):
cookie voice. I'll finally let it out. It sounds badder.
I am from Georgia. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy. Welcome to
the Pokay. I popped my teeth out. Um. Yeah, And
we just thought it was kind of funny when when
we read it because it is this is this is
my natural voice, Caroline, and this is mine. Yeah, this
(01:24):
is how we sound. Sorry, I hope this doesn't ruin
the magic for a if you if you catch the
occasional flat vowel for me, it's because my dad is
from Michigan, and I actually did this vacation of Michigan
not too long ago, so I might have brought some
back with me, a little bit of Michigan. This is
this is what I sound like. I don't try to
I don't try to sound breathy or anything like that. Yeah,
(01:46):
I'm from I'm born and raised in the South, and
people when I go out of town typically can't guess
where I'm from. Yeah, I mean too, And it's kind
of kind of a fun game we can play. Yeah,
it's like where are you from? The best response I
got once was someone guess I was from New Mexico,
because exactly it was the only place that could guess
(02:07):
that had no identifiable accent. But my Southern accent certainly
slips out every now and then. But while we're not
focusing so much on accents today, it did seem to
fit into the fact that we're talking about vocal differences
between men and women, because I I wondered for a
while why men have deeper voices than women typically, and
(02:32):
not surprisingly, it goes back to anatomy, right. Um, And
actually we've we've sort of talked about the differences in
men and women, um in development development wise, when we
talked about the height in the Height episode, about how
men take a little bit longer to develop during puberty
and so that lets them get taller, stronger. Um, it's
kind of the same thing at work as far as
(02:53):
vocal quality and vocal pitch too, because men, uh, in puberty,
they have all the testosterone floating around and that actually
helps the larynx, the voice box what we think of
as the atoms apple to grow larger than a dozen women,
so we don't necessarily most of us ladies don't have
(03:13):
a big larynx hanging out protruding example box. Yeah, it
just means that men tend to developed more thyroid cartilage
and that's all then, adoms apple is I don't like
thinking about cartilage in my throat. Wasn't it described as
a shield, a cartilage shield. Yeah, there's like a shield
shaped bit of cartilage around your neck and the front
(03:35):
portion is what the is the atom's apple. I'm looking
at a diagram right now of of the larynx because
I'm a I'm a visual learner, and the voice box
is quite a complicated set of muscles and tissues and flaps.
There's a fatty pad, yes, the epiglottis, which is the key,
(03:57):
the key flap that opens and closes. Officially, it is
a fibromuscular tube which extends from the base of the
skull to the esophagus, and it's part of the pharynx
and it's nestled between the throat where the food goes
down and the trachea, which is your air pipe, right,
and we have the vocal chords or folds as as
(04:18):
they are also called, that are situated in the middle
of the larynx, and as we breathe in certain muscles
open and closed really quickly, which allows for pressure changes
that creates sound. And some of those flaps around there
also keep you from inhaling broccoli, and they failed one
day while I was at lunch, So now I have
a broccoli plant growing in my lungs. Yeah, I don't
think it's changed the way I sound, though, has changed
(04:40):
the way you smell um. So we'll go in a
little bit more into the how how that vocal cord
structure affects voices, because, as we'll learn, the tension of
in length of vocal core will determine all you sold?
(05:03):
What do you sound like? This? Correct? Christian? And men?
Men have longer, thicker vocal chords. I'm doing a terrible
job of that um which which makes their their voices deeper. Yes,
So let's just go over some just some basic differences
between male and female voices. This is coming a lot
(05:24):
of us, is coming from the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics.
And for starters, obviously, female pitch typically higher. The average
pitch for a woman's voice is a hundred and eighty
two two and twenty hurts compared to a male average pitch,
which is a hundred two hundred and hurts. But while
(05:49):
women's voices also will deepen with puberty, it's only it's
like what an octave half an octave for women that
it decreases and men their voices drop one octave really suddenly.
And when you hear boys voices cracking and they get
all embarrassed, that's actually just their larynx trying to adjust
to its new size. Just in terms of overall voice
(06:12):
quality descriptions, women tend to have more breathiness, higher pitch,
and larger vowels space We enunciate more clearly too, whereas
men have more creek intention in their voice and creak,
creaky voices exactly what it sounds like, that's what they
(06:33):
used to describe someone who, uh, how's more of that
going on? So one thing that that really stood out
to me with all of this um, with all of
this vocal research that we did, is what an incredible
relationship there is between this anatomy that we don't even see,
this complicated larynx structure, cartilage stuff down in your throat. Yeah,
(06:58):
and so many gender stereotypes that come out of it
because we infer so much information about someone based on
what they sound like, Right, Kristen, didn't you mentioned before
we even started recording that some listeners thought that you
and Molly were both blonde eased on how you sounded exactly.
We we infer people's gender, their their race or socio
(07:21):
economic class. They're their height, there where they come from,
they're they're hot, their personalities, all of these things and
a lot of this would come under the umbrella category
of long term speech features. Right, that's how we just
naturally talk when we're not putting on uh, some fake
accent or silly voices or anything. I can. Um, I
(07:43):
can do a silly voice, and that would be a
short term vocal quality. And sometimes, you know, maybe if
I'm like Marilyn Monroe or Kim Kardashian with those breathy voices,
I might be doing it to try to make you
think about me in a certain way, like Hello, Kristen,
I'd be like, Carolyn, why are you coming? I know right,
you'd automatically assume I was coming on to you and
that I was super feminine and sexy if you couldn't
(08:05):
see me. Um. But a long term vocal quality is
is just how I'm speaking right now. And one long
term vocal quality that we really wanted to focus on
again was that deeper voice we associate with men, because
the question was our deeper voices more attractive as we
(08:26):
have this kind of cultural association with deep voice Lumberjack, Yes, yes,
um actually, and study after study found that this was true,
this assumption. Um. They had women listened to recordings of
men speaking and the men with the deeper voices were
considered were assumed to be uh, taller, stronger, more attractive,
(08:49):
and with harry chests. Yeah, I don't know why we
thought of like the brawny man when when a guy
has a deep voice, and of course it's not it's
obviously not true for everybody. You know, deep voices come
in all sorts of different packages. But the assumption exactly
and this is coming from a study by called Men's
Voices and Women's Choices by researchers named Sarah Collins. And uh,
(09:13):
if we go to another study or actually a series
of studies by David Putts, who is an anthropologist who's
now at Penn State who has studied the evolution of
sexual dimorphism, including vocal traits, he he found similar he
can to similar conclusions in a study that he did
where he recruited all of these male college students to
(09:34):
come in and just talk about themselves, and he recorded
cord of them talking about themselves, and then he tinkered
with their pitches so that someone be higher than than
as they actually speak and some lower. And then he
had women come in and listen to the recordings and
they had to write which one, which one of these
(09:55):
guys they would most like to have one night stands
with just quick flings and lo and behold always the
deeper voices, especially when women were ovulating. Yeah, what is
it about us in the ovulation? We just got we
need a taller, stronger, and deeper voices, apparently when we're ovulating.
(10:16):
And he wanted to know why deeper voices might be
more innately attractive, and he thinks that it might be
because it advertises testosterone levels, because kind of like with
the height discussion that we had a couple of weeks ago, Caroline,
because the testosterone influences the vocal core development and deepens
(10:37):
the voice, right, And it was funny I was reading
UM there was an NPR transcript they didn't interview with
with David Putts and um as an evolutionary psychologist at
UC Santa Barbara. And David Putts actually started doing this
research when he was at Michigan State, I believe. And
he was inspired to do it because he was at
the mall and heard these teenage boys all of a
(10:57):
sudden talking and he's really deep much of voices, and
he turned around to see what was going on and
there was a pretty lady with an ear shot, and
he thought, well, they're trying to impress there, and but
why why is the deep voice automatically something that they
go to to try to get a woman at a
tension has to be a tough guy or something. Well,
maybe it has to do with and this is this
came up in that the study men's voices and women's choices.
(11:20):
But maybe it has something to do with the peak
shift effect. You don't even have to see that person
that that woman in the mall, wouldn't necessarily have to
see those teenage boys talking like that. The deep voices,
they could possibly trigger this peak shift effect, which causes
stronger responses to stimuli that are at the extremes of
(11:44):
certain categories. So for instance, as a woman, my voice
and other female voices are at a higher pitch. So
at the other end of that um vocal distribution, we
have a very deep voice many octaves below mine, and
the peak shift effect would say that I would just
(12:05):
automatically hear a deeper voice and be drawn to it
because it's so different from your exactly. Um. It's interesting
reading about the reactions that these women judges had in
some of these vocal studies, because you know, we've talked
a little bit about how they were attracted to these
guys with the deeper voices. But um, they thought that
(12:26):
men with a higher pitch we're smaller, thinner, slower, I
don't even know what white, slower, I don't even less persuasive,
and more nervous. And actually both men and women with
higher pitch were thought to be less competent overall, less honest,
and less persuasive. And the thing was, I think you
(12:47):
you've already mentioned this, Caroline, but there was like none
of these correlations held up, None of these assumptions that
the women had about deeper voices in physicality held up
except for their way, right, But just because you know
you hear a deep voice certainly does not imply from
this study then there's chest hair under that T shirt,
(13:08):
or that they're any taller or bigger or stronger. And
it's just kind of it was kind of interesting to
see how just an auditory queue can produce, you know,
this all of a sudden, this kendall in our well,
it's I mean it's true for women too, for for
male judges judging how women speak. Um, if you're a
(13:30):
woman in the study of Dutch listeners, and you had
a deep voice. They thought of you as large, relaxed, arrogant,
masculine and insensitive. But while we place men and women
at opposite ends of the vocal spectrum, with with women
expected to have these higher pitch, higher frequency voices and
men having the lower, deeper frequencies, when it comes to
(13:54):
voices that we find attractive, while deeper voices tend to
be more attractive in men, kind of deeper voices, breathy,
deeper voices tend to be more sexually attractive in women.
Right back to that NPR transcript, I was looking at
earlier um that used the example of Jessica Rabbit from
(14:16):
her frame Roger Rabbit. She's voiced by Kathleen Turner, who
I think is just fabulous. Promancing the Stone is one
of my favorite movies. But Kathleen Turner has a very
not only a deep voice deeper than normal fur your
average one, but it's it's very breathy too. And that's
just really you have lazy vocal cords. Yes, I had
(14:36):
to break it to you. Well, I'll massage that, like
when it comes from air whistling through a gap. At
the back of the vocal cords, and women actually have
a larger vocal cords gaps, so we do tend to
speak with a little more breath. Um. But Harvard psychologist
David Fineberg attributes this breathy feminine sexiness uh, to accentuating
(15:01):
that natural feminine trait basically, um, broadcasting those gaps in
our vocal cords. Hey, I'm a sexy lady. I've got
I've got really gappy vocal cords, right, can you hear that?
And and we read, uh, we read about studies vocal
studies kind of like the ones we've already talked about,
but that we're done for gay men, and people jumped
(15:24):
to the conclusion that some of them, in speaking were
gay based on the fact that they thought they spoke
in a more feminine way. Not necessarily just like a
woman or anything, but some of the vocal characteristics, the
phonetic variation right in linguistic parlance, Yeah, the study refers
to the spectral skewness of the s consonant that is
(15:48):
uniquely associated with perceived sexual orientation. And it seems like
these kind of um like vocal stereotypes that we attribute
to the g LBT community are extensions of those vocal
stereotypes we saw in that study of heterosexual women listening
to men speaking and assuming that they had the chest
(16:10):
hair and all of that. We again and again we
are attributing all of these these traits two people based
on how our our larynx is constructed, right, I mean?
And you know, they the researchers do point out in
some of these studies that, uh, you know, why are
we making these assumptions? And a lot of it could
have to do with you know, movies, TV radio, that
(16:30):
we we we see someone presented as very masculine or
very feminine and sort of just assume that the way
they talk is representative of all these different kinds of people.
And of course there there's a lot of interaction between
your environment and how you speak. Um In in one
of the studies, the one that was talking about how
we make assumptions about sexual orientation based on vocalizations, some
(16:55):
think that speech differences might be learned socially conventional ways
of speaking. You know, when I am hanging out with
a with the Southern Crew especially, it reminds me of
a and um, I if I if I watch my
mom is a big fan of SEC football, college football,
(17:15):
and if I'm watching a college football game with my mother,
who is quite a rabid fan, I tends as the
closer we get to the fourth quarter, I mean it
comes out, you know, a little bit get or done. Yeah, my, my, my,
my southern accent comes comes out of the closet a
little bit more. Yeah, It's just it's the same way
when I'm with my dad in Michigan. Neither one of
(17:36):
us really has any sort of accent when we're in Georgia.
But like the closer it gets to going on vacation,
up in the mitten, the the flatter his valves get. Yeah,
don't mess with the mitten. Now you know how to
make that don't mess with the mitten sound far more menacing, Caroline.
You want to exert some some dominance if I if
(17:57):
I from the you know, the lower portion of the
United States, him and pointing the finger at your your mitten. Hey,
you should maybe lower your your vocal register, exert more
dominance with the mitten that we I mean, you're looking
at me. You know, I'm not a serious person. I'm terrified.
(18:19):
The point I'm trying to make, of course, is that
We've talked about deeper voices signaling sexual attraction, but deeper voices,
especially in men, are a signal even among men to
each other of dominance. Right. They even men are more
likely to rate other dudes with deep voices as more dominant,
(18:41):
although it did talk kind of about how men who
rate themselves as dominant are less likely to rate other
menu ates dominant. It might be competition or something. It
might be a little complicated. Um, but while the deeper
voices is an auditory signal of dominance for women, the
threat among other women comes with highly feminine voices. And
(19:01):
it might have something to do with some research from
Susan Hughes at Albright College who found that both men
and women with sexy voices also tend to be more
symmetrical and have traditionally sexy body types. So it might
be an auditory thing reinforcing the visual of oh wow,
not only are you just bonkers attractive, you have an
(19:26):
incredible voice. And it could be hormonal, right She talked
about like if if hormones are more able to give
you a curvy hourglass, maybe they also give you a
sexy Jessica Rabbit voice. Perhaps I don't know if that's
sounded accurate at all. And another fun fact from Susan Hughes,
people with attractive voices seem to have more sex partners
(19:46):
over their lifetime hormones. I mean, who knew that your
voice box has such a profound impact. I know it
helps me at karaoke. I don't know what people think
of me when I'm just talking. I haven't heard you
sing yet. We'll have to have a special, special musical episode.
So we've covered a ton of studies and a lot
(20:07):
of different aspects of voice, how our voices develop, and
how people perceive us based on our voice. So what
do you think? Do you think, Caroline is what's what's
the takeaway from all of this? I think the takeaway
is that people are judge mcjudge Stein's and that they
are going to judge that you are a certain way
because of the way you sound if they haven't seen
(20:27):
you or interacted with you. But it you know, just
because you have a deep voice doesn't mean you're six
five and a football player. And if you're just right
with a hairy chest, um, but you know, if you
have a high pitch voice, that doesn't mean you're weak
or slow. Or you know any of those things either. Yeah,
maybe it's another another way to keep us cognizant of
(20:47):
the gender stereotypes that we just automatically might make knee
jerk judgments. And I think one major thing to take
away is that this is really how I speak. It
is yes, and this is and this is how I
speak as well, unless I'm watching football, my mother hanging
out in Michigan and whatever. Yeah. I think one one
final vocal anecdote, I think that the the most striking
(21:12):
difference between a voice that I heard and the physicality
that I've built up in my mind of how that
person looked and how that person actually looks in real life.
Terry Gross the host of fresh Air on NPR, which
I love. If I could somehow high or Terry Gross
to read to me every night, I would do it.
I love I love her voice, and some people don't
(21:34):
like it, but I I really enjoy her voice. And
the first time I saw a picture, it just it
did not match up at all. Um for so, I
imagine her was these long curls for some reason, and
she has uh, pretty much a crew cut. So anyway,
it was just, uh, that's my that's my voice story. Yeah.
So now now I would like to invite listeners to
(21:55):
write in thinking are explaining to us whether our voices match?
Are our faces on Facebook? Yeah, we've got our picture
up there. Yeah. Yeah, judge us. We we just our
message take away message was don't judge, and now we're
asking no, I mean, but don't judge us in a
mean way. Obviously, we we just can't. We're sensitive people.
We can't handle it. Yeah, we can handle it, don't
(22:18):
most with admitten exactly. Well, again, if you have any
thoughts send our way on voices, email us smam stuff
at how stuff works dot com. And we've got an
email here to read That ties in with actually a
number of episodes, but it's in response to our episode
on women's intuition, Right, Sydney writes A couple of weeks ago,
(22:43):
a friend told me that since I started on estrogen,
I'm the male to female transsexual former freemason who emailed
last year I have grown some empathy, whereas he had
previously insisted that I utterly lacked it. Now I hear
your podcast on empathy and intuition, I've entertained at the
notion that he's clearly wrong, which I had already asserted
on the grounds that I feel I was empathetic before.
(23:06):
But part of me hopes that not too many people
hear this and lose the superstition that I now have
the benefit of these internal enhancements. Winky faith, And You've
got me wondering about some of the other mental and
emotional changes I've associated with the estrogen therapy. How much
of it is, how much of it is all in
my head? And how much is well actually in my head. Yeah,
(23:26):
I think that at some point we need to do
an episode dedicated just to testosterm on just to estrogen,
because they come up all the wonky things they do.
Um well again, if you have an email to send
our way, Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works is the
address to direct it to. And also find us on Facebook.
Head over there if anything to see what we look like. Yeah,
(23:51):
and you have our voices, manage our picture and follow
us on Twitter as well at Mom's Stuff podcast, And
then you can check out our blog Dear in the week,
It's stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
(24:13):
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You?
From house Stop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen. I'm Caroline. So there was a
(00:21):
recent comment left on the Facebook fan page for Stuff
Mom Never Told You, which, if you aren't a fan yet,
you should do that right now stop listening to this
podcast to the Facebook. Um. But this we have to
quote this comment because it relates a lot to what
we're talking about today. And this is from a guy
(00:43):
named Morgan, and he says, Okay, I've been wondering for
a while, do you guys use a different voice when
you're making the show. I've heard hints and glimmers of
a Southern accent, but I think I speak for all
of us when I say you should do one podcast
in your natural voice. So Caroline, stop, stop with your
(01:03):
cookie voice. I'll finally let it out. It sounds badder.
I am from Georgia. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy. Welcome to
the Pokay. I popped my teeth out. Um. Yeah, And
we just thought it was kind of funny when when
we read it because it is this is this is
my natural voice, Caroline, and this is mine. Yeah, this
(01:24):
is how we sound. Sorry, I hope this doesn't ruin
the magic for a if you if you catch the
occasional flat vowel for me, it's because my dad is
from Michigan, and I actually did this vacation of Michigan
not too long ago, so I might have brought some
back with me, a little bit of Michigan. This is
this is what I sound like. I don't try to
I don't try to sound breathy or anything like that. Yeah,
(01:46):
I'm from I'm born and raised in the South, and
people when I go out of town typically can't guess
where I'm from. Yeah, I mean too, And it's kind
of kind of a fun game we can play. Yeah,
it's like where are you from? The best response I
got once was someone guess I was from New Mexico,
because exactly it was the only place that could guess
(02:07):
that had no identifiable accent. But my Southern accent certainly
slips out every now and then. But while we're not
focusing so much on accents today, it did seem to
fit into the fact that we're talking about vocal differences
between men and women, because I I wondered for a
while why men have deeper voices than women typically, and
(02:32):
not surprisingly, it goes back to anatomy, right. Um, And
actually we've we've sort of talked about the differences in
men and women, um in development development wise, when we
talked about the height in the Height episode, about how
men take a little bit longer to develop during puberty
and so that lets them get taller, stronger. Um, it's
kind of the same thing at work as far as
(02:53):
vocal quality and vocal pitch too, because men, uh, in puberty,
they have all the testosterone floating around and that actually
helps the larynx, the voice box what we think of
as the atoms apple to grow larger than a dozen women,
so we don't necessarily most of us ladies don't have
(03:13):
a big larynx hanging out protruding example box. Yeah, it
just means that men tend to developed more thyroid cartilage
and that's all then, adoms apple is I don't like
thinking about cartilage in my throat. Wasn't it described as
a shield, a cartilage shield. Yeah, there's like a shield
shaped bit of cartilage around your neck and the front
(03:35):
portion is what the is the atom's apple. I'm looking
at a diagram right now of of the larynx because
I'm a I'm a visual learner, and the voice box
is quite a complicated set of muscles and tissues and flaps.
There's a fatty pad, yes, the epiglottis, which is the key,
(03:57):
the key flap that opens and closes. Officially, it is
a fibromuscular tube which extends from the base of the
skull to the esophagus, and it's part of the pharynx
and it's nestled between the throat where the food goes
down and the trachea, which is your air pipe, right,
and we have the vocal chords or folds as as
(04:18):
they are also called, that are situated in the middle
of the larynx, and as we breathe in certain muscles
open and closed really quickly, which allows for pressure changes
that creates sound. And some of those flaps around there
also keep you from inhaling broccoli, and they failed one
day while I was at lunch, So now I have
a broccoli plant growing in my lungs. Yeah, I don't
think it's changed the way I sound, though, has changed
(04:40):
the way you smell um. So we'll go in a
little bit more into the how how that vocal cord
structure affects voices, because, as we'll learn, the tension of
in length of vocal core will determine all you sold?
(05:03):
What do you sound like? This? Correct? Christian? And men?
Men have longer, thicker vocal chords. I'm doing a terrible
job of that um which which makes their their voices deeper. Yes,
So let's just go over some just some basic differences
between male and female voices. This is coming a lot
(05:24):
of us, is coming from the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics.
And for starters, obviously, female pitch typically higher. The average
pitch for a woman's voice is a hundred and eighty
two two and twenty hurts compared to a male average pitch,
which is a hundred two hundred and hurts. But while
(05:49):
women's voices also will deepen with puberty, it's only it's
like what an octave half an octave for women that
it decreases and men their voices drop one octave really suddenly.
And when you hear boys voices cracking and they get
all embarrassed, that's actually just their larynx trying to adjust
to its new size. Just in terms of overall voice
(06:12):
quality descriptions, women tend to have more breathiness, higher pitch,
and larger vowels space We enunciate more clearly too, whereas
men have more creek intention in their voice and creak,
creaky voices exactly what it sounds like, that's what they
(06:33):
used to describe someone who, uh, how's more of that
going on? So one thing that that really stood out
to me with all of this um, with all of
this vocal research that we did, is what an incredible
relationship there is between this anatomy that we don't even see,
this complicated larynx structure, cartilage stuff down in your throat. Yeah,
(06:58):
and so many gender stereotypes that come out of it
because we infer so much information about someone based on
what they sound like, Right, Kristen, didn't you mentioned before
we even started recording that some listeners thought that you
and Molly were both blonde eased on how you sounded exactly.
We we infer people's gender, their their race or socio
(07:21):
economic class. They're their height, there where they come from,
they're they're hot, their personalities, all of these things and
a lot of this would come under the umbrella category
of long term speech features. Right, that's how we just
naturally talk when we're not putting on uh, some fake
accent or silly voices or anything. I can. Um, I
(07:43):
can do a silly voice, and that would be a
short term vocal quality. And sometimes, you know, maybe if
I'm like Marilyn Monroe or Kim Kardashian with those breathy voices,
I might be doing it to try to make you
think about me in a certain way, like Hello, Kristen,
I'd be like, Carolyn, why are you coming? I know right,
you'd automatically assume I was coming on to you and
that I was super feminine and sexy if you couldn't
(08:05):
see me. Um. But a long term vocal quality is
is just how I'm speaking right now. And one long
term vocal quality that we really wanted to focus on
again was that deeper voice we associate with men, because
the question was our deeper voices more attractive as we
(08:26):
have this kind of cultural association with deep voice Lumberjack, Yes, yes,
um actually, and study after study found that this was true,
this assumption. Um. They had women listened to recordings of
men speaking and the men with the deeper voices were
considered were assumed to be uh, taller, stronger, more attractive,
(08:49):
and with harry chests. Yeah, I don't know why we
thought of like the brawny man when when a guy
has a deep voice, and of course it's not it's
obviously not true for everybody. You know, deep voices come
in all sorts of different packages. But the assumption exactly
and this is coming from a study by called Men's
Voices and Women's Choices by researchers named Sarah Collins. And uh,
(09:13):
if we go to another study or actually a series
of studies by David Putts, who is an anthropologist who's
now at Penn State who has studied the evolution of
sexual dimorphism, including vocal traits, he he found similar he
can to similar conclusions in a study that he did
where he recruited all of these male college students to
(09:34):
come in and just talk about themselves, and he recorded
cord of them talking about themselves, and then he tinkered
with their pitches so that someone be higher than than
as they actually speak and some lower. And then he
had women come in and listen to the recordings and
they had to write which one, which one of these
(09:55):
guys they would most like to have one night stands
with just quick flings and lo and behold always the
deeper voices, especially when women were ovulating. Yeah, what is
it about us in the ovulation? We just got we
need a taller, stronger, and deeper voices, apparently when we're ovulating.
(10:16):
And he wanted to know why deeper voices might be
more innately attractive, and he thinks that it might be
because it advertises testosterone levels, because kind of like with
the height discussion that we had a couple of weeks ago, Caroline,
because the testosterone influences the vocal core development and deepens
(10:37):
the voice, right, And it was funny I was reading
UM there was an NPR transcript they didn't interview with
with David Putts and um as an evolutionary psychologist at
UC Santa Barbara. And David Putts actually started doing this
research when he was at Michigan State, I believe. And
he was inspired to do it because he was at
the mall and heard these teenage boys all of a
(10:57):
sudden talking and he's really deep much of voices, and
he turned around to see what was going on and
there was a pretty lady with an ear shot, and
he thought, well, they're trying to impress there, and but
why why is the deep voice automatically something that they
go to to try to get a woman at a
tension has to be a tough guy or something. Well,
maybe it has to do with and this is this
came up in that the study men's voices and women's choices.
(11:20):
But maybe it has something to do with the peak
shift effect. You don't even have to see that person
that that woman in the mall, wouldn't necessarily have to
see those teenage boys talking like that. The deep voices,
they could possibly trigger this peak shift effect, which causes
stronger responses to stimuli that are at the extremes of
(11:44):
certain categories. So for instance, as a woman, my voice
and other female voices are at a higher pitch. So
at the other end of that um vocal distribution, we
have a very deep voice many octaves below mine, and
the peak shift effect would say that I would just
(12:05):
automatically hear a deeper voice and be drawn to it
because it's so different from your exactly. Um. It's interesting
reading about the reactions that these women judges had in
some of these vocal studies, because you know, we've talked
a little bit about how they were attracted to these
guys with the deeper voices. But um, they thought that
(12:26):
men with a higher pitch we're smaller, thinner, slower, I
don't even know what white, slower, I don't even less persuasive,
and more nervous. And actually both men and women with
higher pitch were thought to be less competent overall, less honest,
and less persuasive. And the thing was, I think you
(12:47):
you've already mentioned this, Caroline, but there was like none
of these correlations held up, None of these assumptions that
the women had about deeper voices in physicality held up
except for their way, right, But just because you know
you hear a deep voice certainly does not imply from
this study then there's chest hair under that T shirt,
(13:08):
or that they're any taller or bigger or stronger. And
it's just kind of it was kind of interesting to
see how just an auditory queue can produce, you know,
this all of a sudden, this kendall in our well,
it's I mean it's true for women too, for for
male judges judging how women speak. Um, if you're a
(13:30):
woman in the study of Dutch listeners, and you had
a deep voice. They thought of you as large, relaxed, arrogant,
masculine and insensitive. But while we place men and women
at opposite ends of the vocal spectrum, with with women
expected to have these higher pitch, higher frequency voices and
men having the lower, deeper frequencies, when it comes to
(13:54):
voices that we find attractive, while deeper voices tend to
be more attractive in men, kind of deeper voices, breathy,
deeper voices tend to be more sexually attractive in women.
Right back to that NPR transcript, I was looking at
earlier um that used the example of Jessica Rabbit from
(14:16):
her frame Roger Rabbit. She's voiced by Kathleen Turner, who
I think is just fabulous. Promancing the Stone is one
of my favorite movies. But Kathleen Turner has a very
not only a deep voice deeper than normal fur your
average one, but it's it's very breathy too. And that's
just really you have lazy vocal cords. Yes, I had
(14:36):
to break it to you. Well, I'll massage that, like
when it comes from air whistling through a gap. At
the back of the vocal cords, and women actually have
a larger vocal cords gaps, so we do tend to
speak with a little more breath. Um. But Harvard psychologist
David Fineberg attributes this breathy feminine sexiness uh, to accentuating
(15:01):
that natural feminine trait basically, um, broadcasting those gaps in
our vocal cords. Hey, I'm a sexy lady. I've got
I've got really gappy vocal cords, right, can you hear that?
And and we read, uh, we read about studies vocal
studies kind of like the ones we've already talked about,
but that we're done for gay men, and people jumped
(15:24):
to the conclusion that some of them, in speaking were
gay based on the fact that they thought they spoke
in a more feminine way. Not necessarily just like a
woman or anything, but some of the vocal characteristics, the
phonetic variation right in linguistic parlance, Yeah, the study refers
to the spectral skewness of the s consonant that is
(15:48):
uniquely associated with perceived sexual orientation. And it seems like
these kind of um like vocal stereotypes that we attribute
to the g LBT community are extensions of those vocal
stereotypes we saw in that study of heterosexual women listening
to men speaking and assuming that they had the chest
(16:10):
hair and all of that. We again and again we
are attributing all of these these traits two people based
on how our our larynx is constructed, right, I mean?
And you know, they the researchers do point out in
some of these studies that, uh, you know, why are
we making these assumptions? And a lot of it could
have to do with you know, movies, TV radio, that
(16:30):
we we we see someone presented as very masculine or
very feminine and sort of just assume that the way
they talk is representative of all these different kinds of people.
And of course there there's a lot of interaction between
your environment and how you speak. Um In in one
of the studies, the one that was talking about how
we make assumptions about sexual orientation based on vocalizations, some
(16:55):
think that speech differences might be learned socially conventional ways
of speaking. You know, when I am hanging out with
a with the Southern Crew especially, it reminds me of
a and um, I if I if I watch my
mom is a big fan of SEC football, college football,
(17:15):
and if I'm watching a college football game with my mother,
who is quite a rabid fan, I tends as the
closer we get to the fourth quarter, I mean it
comes out, you know, a little bit get or done. Yeah, my, my, my,
my southern accent comes comes out of the closet a
little bit more. Yeah, It's just it's the same way
when I'm with my dad in Michigan. Neither one of
(17:36):
us really has any sort of accent when we're in Georgia.
But like the closer it gets to going on vacation,
up in the mitten, the the flatter his valves get. Yeah,
don't mess with the mitten. Now you know how to
make that don't mess with the mitten sound far more menacing, Caroline.
You want to exert some some dominance if I if
(17:57):
I from the you know, the lower portion of the
United States, him and pointing the finger at your your mitten. Hey,
you should maybe lower your your vocal register, exert more
dominance with the mitten that we I mean, you're looking
at me. You know, I'm not a serious person. I'm terrified.
(18:19):
The point I'm trying to make, of course, is that
We've talked about deeper voices signaling sexual attraction, but deeper voices,
especially in men, are a signal even among men to
each other of dominance. Right. They even men are more
likely to rate other dudes with deep voices as more dominant,
(18:41):
although it did talk kind of about how men who
rate themselves as dominant are less likely to rate other
menu ates dominant. It might be competition or something. It
might be a little complicated. Um, but while the deeper
voices is an auditory signal of dominance for women, the
threat among other women comes with highly feminine voices. And
(19:01):
it might have something to do with some research from
Susan Hughes at Albright College who found that both men
and women with sexy voices also tend to be more
symmetrical and have traditionally sexy body types. So it might
be an auditory thing reinforcing the visual of oh wow,
not only are you just bonkers attractive, you have an
(19:26):
incredible voice. And it could be hormonal, right She talked
about like if if hormones are more able to give
you a curvy hourglass, maybe they also give you a
sexy Jessica Rabbit voice. Perhaps I don't know if that's
sounded accurate at all. And another fun fact from Susan Hughes,
people with attractive voices seem to have more sex partners
(19:46):
over their lifetime hormones. I mean, who knew that your
voice box has such a profound impact. I know it
helps me at karaoke. I don't know what people think
of me when I'm just talking. I haven't heard you
sing yet. We'll have to have a special, special musical episode.
So we've covered a ton of studies and a lot
(20:07):
of different aspects of voice, how our voices develop, and
how people perceive us based on our voice. So what
do you think? Do you think, Caroline is what's what's
the takeaway from all of this? I think the takeaway
is that people are judge mcjudge Stein's and that they
are going to judge that you are a certain way
because of the way you sound if they haven't seen
(20:27):
you or interacted with you. But it you know, just
because you have a deep voice doesn't mean you're six
five and a football player. And if you're just right
with a hairy chest, um, but you know, if you
have a high pitch voice, that doesn't mean you're weak
or slow. Or you know any of those things either. Yeah,
maybe it's another another way to keep us cognizant of
(20:47):
the gender stereotypes that we just automatically might make knee
jerk judgments. And I think one major thing to take
away is that this is really how I speak. It
is yes, and this is and this is how I
speak as well, unless I'm watching football, my mother hanging
out in Michigan and whatever. Yeah. I think one one
final vocal anecdote, I think that the the most striking
(21:12):
difference between a voice that I heard and the physicality
that I've built up in my mind of how that
person looked and how that person actually looks in real life.
Terry Gross the host of fresh Air on NPR, which
I love. If I could somehow high or Terry Gross
to read to me every night, I would do it.
I love I love her voice, and some people don't
(21:34):
like it, but I I really enjoy her voice. And
the first time I saw a picture, it just it
did not match up at all. Um for so, I
imagine her was these long curls for some reason, and
she has uh, pretty much a crew cut. So anyway,
it was just, uh, that's my that's my voice story. Yeah.
So now now I would like to invite listeners to
(21:55):
write in thinking are explaining to us whether our voices match?
Are our faces on Facebook? Yeah, we've got our picture
up there. Yeah. Yeah, judge us. We we just our
message take away message was don't judge, and now we're
asking no, I mean, but don't judge us in a
mean way. Obviously, we we just can't. We're sensitive people.
We can't handle it. Yeah, we can handle it, don't
(22:18):
most with admitten exactly. Well, again, if you have any
thoughts send our way on voices, email us smam stuff
at how stuff works dot com. And we've got an
email here to read That ties in with actually a
number of episodes, but it's in response to our episode
on women's intuition, Right, Sydney writes A couple of weeks ago,
(22:43):
a friend told me that since I started on estrogen,
I'm the male to female transsexual former freemason who emailed
last year I have grown some empathy, whereas he had
previously insisted that I utterly lacked it. Now I hear
your podcast on empathy and intuition, I've entertained at the
notion that he's clearly wrong, which I had already asserted
on the grounds that I feel I was empathetic before.
(23:06):
But part of me hopes that not too many people
hear this and lose the superstition that I now have
the benefit of these internal enhancements. Winky faith, And You've
got me wondering about some of the other mental and
emotional changes I've associated with the estrogen therapy. How much
of it is, how much of it is all in
my head? And how much is well actually in my head. Yeah,
(23:26):
I think that at some point we need to do
an episode dedicated just to testosterm on just to estrogen,
because they come up all the wonky things they do.
Um well again, if you have an email to send
our way, Mom Stuff at how Stuff Works is the
address to direct it to. And also find us on Facebook.
Head over there if anything to see what we look like. Yeah,
(23:51):
and you have our voices, manage our picture and follow
us on Twitter as well at Mom's Stuff podcast, And
then you can check out our blog Dear in the week,
It's stuff Mom Never told You from how Stuff Works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
(24:13):
we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
The How Stuff Works I Fine app has arrived. Download
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