Vocal modulation during courtship

What is it about?

In a sample of 110 heterosexual individuals, who were either native English or Czech speakers, we found that men in both languages tended to speak in a more variable voice (more sing-songy) to women they found attractive. At some point during the same speech excerpts, they also reached a lower minimum voice pitch, or ‘deep voice’, compared with when they spoke to women they considered less attractive.

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Why is it important?

Our findings are not only novel, but also of broad interest as they expose essential elements of human behaviour. We report surprising results for voice perception researchers and strikingly similar cross-language effects, and argue that our results provide new evidence for Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis for the evolution of musicality.