High voice pitch mitigates the aversiveness of antisocial cues in men's speech

• Published in: The British journal of psychology Vol. 109; no. 4; pp. 812 - 829
• Main Authors: O'Connor, Jillian J. M., Barclay, Pat
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England British Psychological Society 01.11.2018
• Subjects: Adolescent; Affect; Antisocial behavior; attractiveness; Credibility; Cues; Female; fundamental frequency; Humans; Listeners; Male; masculinity; Men; Perceptions; Pitch; Prosocial behavior; Semantics; Sexual Partners; Social Behavior; Social Perception; Speech; Speech - physiology; Speech Perception - physiology; trustworthiness; Voice - physiology; Voices; Words; Young Adult; attractiveness; trustworthiness; masculinity; semantics; fundamental frequency
• ISSN: 0007-1269; 2044-8295
• DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12310

Speech contains both explicit social information in semantic content and implicit cues to social behaviour and mate quality in voice pitch. Voice pitch has been demonstrated to have pervasive effects on social perceptions, but few studies have examined these perceptions in the context of meaningful speech. Here, we examined whether male voice pitch interacted with socially relevant cues in speech to influence listeners’ perceptions of trustworthiness and attractiveness. We artificially manipulated men's voices to be higher and lower in pitch when speaking words that were either prosocial or antisocial in nature. In Study 1, we found that listeners perceived lower‐pitched voices as more trustworthy and attractive in the context of prosocial words than in the context of antisocial words. In Study 2, we found evidence that suggests this effect was driven by stronger preferences for higher‐pitched voices in the context of antisocial cues, as voice pitch preferences were not significantly different in the context of prosocial cues. These findings suggest that higher male voice pitch may ameliorate the negative effects of antisocial speech content and that listeners may be particularly avoidant of those who express multiple cues to antisociality across modalities.