What makes voices attractive

It often ranks highly on unscientific accent preference polls. Barkat-Defradas suggests that French speakers pout more to form words, which might be seen as attractive. The difficulty when looking at languages rather than specific qualities of speech is that languages also communicate national stereotypes. For French natives, of course, these associations are much more accent-specific.

But could putting on an accent help you to appear younger or more masculine? Humans have a remarkable vocal range, but also a good ability to detect fakers and are not easily deceived, says Pisanski, referring to data from an as-yet-unpublished study. A desire to give the impression of competence might be one reason behind the rise of "vocal fry" among young American women, says Pisanski. Vocal fry is where the pitch of our voice falls below a natural level, creating a sound that is rough.

Men can go much lower essentially. For example, if your voice goes too low, vocal fry might harm your job prospects , maybe because the trope of women speaking with rough voices is culturally associated with unseriousness, suggest the authors. If you need another reason not to put on an accent, there is evidence it pays to be completely average. People with average looks and average voices are thought to have more heterozygous major histocompatibility complexes MHCs.

This is a sequence of DNA that codes for cell-surface proteins that help our immune systems detect which cells in our bodies belong to us and which are outsiders. Being able to do this means we can quickly identify pathogens and destroy them. Therefore, average individuals are better placed to pass on useful genes for a healthy immune system. It could also be that average-voiced individuals are easier to understand, in part because we are exposed to the average more frequently than people at the extremes.

Much of this research, you might note, has been conducted on heterosexual people, in part because evolutionary biologists want to find explanations for modern human behaviours in the selective pressures our ancestors were exposed to. Our female ancestors would have looked for masculine qualities, the theory goes, as stronger men can take better care of their families, while men sought young women who have more child-bearing years ahead of them.

When I put this to Pisanski, she agreed that there was a bias towards studying men's voices. What research has been done on homosexual people has largely looked at male preferences — and found broadly that gay men have similar tastes to straight women. These theories are based on purely biological explanations of desirability. These preferences can play a big part in how we enjoy the spaces around us too! Take our Hearing Personality test to find your Hearing Aura and get access to tips and tricks on how to make the most of the sounds around you.

Believe it or not, ordinary sounds cause many of us to feel negative emotions, such as irritation, stress, anxiety or worry. Imagine this. How disappointing! It plays a huge part of how I perceive the world and sound helps me communicate to this world. Hearing wellness is taking responsibility for the sound you intimate into your life but also the noise you generate out into the world.

Sound helps me connect to the world and to myself. I am passionate about sound because life is simply too precious to ruin it with ugly loud noise. Being comfortable and in tune with my ears and the sounds around me — on my terms — no pain, no wincing, able to hear what I want when I want without distractions or pollution.

Rather than a high-pitched, girlish voice, women drop their tones to a lower, sexier register. It feels as if it is spoken from the chest, rather than the head. Its tones are pleasing and not at all nasal. For an example of a sexy male voice, the professor went with a classic — James Earl Jones — as well as Barack Obama. Keep checking back for more expert-based articles and personal stories. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline.

So by lowering their pitch, males can show their physical dominance in front of their competitors and appear more sexually fit to females. As a result, women find men with lower-pitched voices more attractive. Attractiveness in the voice is important for the impressions we give our potential partners. In research settings, this is studied by asking listeners to rate voices of people they have never seen as either attractive or unattractive.

Using this method, one study showed that people who reported being more sexually experienced and sexually active were rated to have more attractive voices by strangers. We actually have the ability to change the attractiveness of our voice depending on our interlocutor, and we do this without knowing.

Women sometimes modify their voices to sound most attractive during the most fertile part of their menstrual cycle. Men also modify the pitch in their voice, specifically when confronted with potential competitors in dating scenarios. This means that just like we fix our hairstyle or clothes to look more attractive for a date, we also give our voices an unconscious makeover to sound more attractive and sexually fit.