We're all attracted to people all the time. What is it that attracts us to others? And
what do others find attractive about you? These are some of the questions our team is
going to try and answer in this series of videos. With millions of people to choose
from, finding that perfect someone shouldn't be that difficult. But the media, social pressures
and human nature itself have turned it into a mystery. We're surrounded by manipulated
images, celebrity and glossy perfection. We're given rules about dating through books, websites
and the press. They all pressure us to conform to an ideal of what is attractive. But what's
the truth? It's time for science to tackle the subject. Through a series of experiments,
our team are going to piece together some of the clues to this enormously complex phenomenon
and in these videos they will explore
the science of attraction.
The lungs, the vocal folds within the larynx, and the articulators or mouth generate a noise
and make sounds, that's all there is to the human voice. But it creates speech, communication,
laughter, crying, screaming and singing.
People often create a mental image of a person when they hear their voice, making assumptions
based on the way that they sound. How does our voice represent us? Does it reflect our
personality or can it even affect it? Can the voice itself be attractive; can another
person find someone desirable purely based on the way that they sound?
So today with some help from Shakespeare
>>They do not love that do not show their love
The team are going to investigate what we can tell from a voice and the impact it has
on attraction. But first here's Kat.
Voices can gives clues to physical characteristics. Men tend to have deeper voices because they
are usually physically bigger and have larger larynxes. These effects are probably hormone
driven, but the link isn't that straightforward. The difference between male and female voices
is more obvious, but what else do we identify about a person from their voice?
Research has shown that listeners can detect people's socioeconomic status[JFL2], personality,
and emotional or mental state from their voice. They can also estimate age, height, and weight
about as accurately from voice clips as they can from photographs.
When it comes to attractiveness science suggests that higher pitched voices in women and deeper
pitched voices in men are generally rated the more attractive.
Today we are at a sound recording studio and we've invited a group of guys and a group
of girls to take part in this experiment. To keep everything fair, we've been very careful
to keep them apart and now Charlie will explain to them what's going to happen.
Hello boys, thanks a lot for coming, I'm Charlie.
Hello ladies, thanks for coming along, I'm Charlie.
Now what we would like you to do, is read out a lovely bit of Shakespearean pros for
us, we're going to record it and then play it to some dashing guys who are going to give
us their opinion on exactly what they think.
And play it to some lovely ladies to find out exactly what they think of your voices.
[music]
To keep the test fair we recorded both groups reading the same piece of Shakespeare and
now we're going to play the boys version to the girls and the girls to the boys.
>>Do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth.
>> Love is a devil. There is no evil angel.
The first task will be to rate the attractiveness of each voice on a scale from one to five.
Will their choices match the sites?
Welcome back now we've got some female voices for you to listen to, we would like you to
rate them on a scale of one to five based on what you find the most attractive with
five being the best.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>What's everyone's favourite?
>>One
>>One and Four
>>Least favourite was five
>>Two was my least favourite
>>Two and five were [laughter]
>>Look, one and four I'd say are my favourites, but which one if we had to pick one out of
one and four?
>>One
>>Going to have to go with one
>>Yeah I reckon one as well
>>They do not love that do not show their love.
So voice number one was a clear winner for the boys scoring 23 out of 25 points and it
had one of the highest pitched voices in the group. However, voice number four which came
second with 20 points was actually the highest pitched. With two of the highest pitched voices
being voted as favourites, the results back up the science that higher pitched voices
in women are generally perceived as being more attractive. Let's go and see what the
girls think of the boys.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love. [Laughter]
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>We know who the least popular one is.
>>Definitely
>>It's the one we all laughed at.
>>I put three as the same. Going to have to see what happens
>>Three was only marginally better
>>I quite liked four and five
>>Yeah, four had quite a sexy voice, very moving voice
>>I thought one was alright though
>>Five had a nice accent, there was something subtle
>>He just didn't do it for me at all
>>Do the rest of you prefer voice four then?
>>Yeah
>>Yeah definitely
>>Voice four was so natural
>>Yeah sexy without trying to be
>>Dreamy, I didn't just say that. [laughter]
>>They do not love that do not show their love.
>>Girls found voice four the most attractive giving him 22 points out of 25 and he actually
had the deepest voice. Voice number one, whose voice was not as deep as our winners, came
second with a meagre score of 17
>>We often make assumptions about what a person looks like from just their voice. A study
shows that people are able to match a speaker's voice with a photograph over 75% of the time.
For our second test we asked each group to match the voice to the face.
>>So now that you've had a chance to form a mental image of the person behind the voice
its time to see if you can match the voice to the actual face.
>>They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run
smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.
>>Both the boys and the girls had a second chance to listen to the voices.
>>They do not love that do not show their love
>>But this time they had their faces on screen and they had to try and match them up.
>>The course of true love never did run smooth.
>>Love is a familiar. Love is a devil.
>>There is no evil angel but love.
>>The girls did quite well
>>I found with every boy I was just like yeah definitely
>>Have we all got the same for three and four?
>>Yeah, we have, C and D
>>Occasionally getting all getting the same voice to face match
>>For Mr C I had voice three
>>I also had voice three
>>Voice three
>>Same here I had Mr C as voice three
>>And same, Mr C, voice three
>>Yeah Wahoo!
>>That's exactly how I pictured him.
>>But the boys failed miserably and couldn't seem to agree on anything.
>>I think Miss E was the very well spoken one
>>I think Miss C
>>Miss C or Miss A?
>>I think miss D is really sort of innocent, she might be trying to put on a little cute
voice
>>No she doesn't [laughter] I'm just sure she's got to be voice five, I'm sorry
>>I think Miss B is voice five
>>Or no, Miss A
>>I put Miss E down as voice five
>>I got her as voice two
>>Voice three
>>Voice four
>>Voice one
>>But what does all of this prove? Well it's time to go to Kat
We got nothing like the accuracy we expected. The boys only correctly identified 20% of
the girls' voices correctly, while the girls did better with 60% but still neither hit
the 75% expectation. The fact that the girls did better is to be expected. Women have to
be more attentive to the signals which will identify a good mate as they have more to
lose in the mating game.
We do see that deeper voices in men and higher pitched voices in women were rated more attractive
which matches our expected results. Having said that, there are always exceptions to
the rule. Whether or not your voice fits your image, you speak with confidence or have a
strong accent, knowing that your voice can make an impact is a good thing to keep in
mind, especially when it comes to dating.
So it comes as no surprise, that our 'voice' influences how we are perceived by other people.
Judgements are made based on the way we sound almost as much as our appearance. It would
seem the voice literally speaks volumes.
>>To find out more and test out our chat up line generator go to scienceofattraction.co.uk