Linking men's voice pitch to actual and perceived trustworthiness across domains

Abstract

Previous research suggests that judgments about a male speaker's trustworthiness vary due to the speaker's voice pitch (mean F0) and differ across domains. However, mixed results in terms of the direction and extent of such effects have been reported. Moreover, no study so far has investigated whether men's mean F0 is, indeed, a valid cue to their self-reported and behavioral trustworthiness, and whether trustworthiness judgments are accurate. We tested the relation between mean F0 and actual general, economic, and mating-related trustworthiness in 181 men, as well as trustworthiness judgments of 95 perceivers across all three domains. Analyses show that men's mean F0 is not related to Honesty–Humility (as a trait indicator of general trustworthiness), trustworthy intentions, or trust game behavior, suggesting no relation of mean F0 to general or economic trustworthiness. In contrast, results suggest that mean F0 might be related to mating-related trustworthiness (as indicated by self-reported relationship infidelity). However, lower mean F0 was judged as more trustworthy in economic but less trustworthy in mating-related domains and rather weakly related to judgments of general trustworthiness. Trustworthiness judgments were not accurate for general or economic trustworthiness, but exploratory analyses suggest that women might be able to accurately judge men's relationship infidelity based on their voice pitch. Next to these analyses, we report exploratory analyses involving and controlling for additional voice parameters.

Do voices carry valid information about a speaker's personality?

“…Puts, 2005), which are captured in our study by a less restricted sociosexual behavior. These findings are in line with an association of lower voice pitch with a higher probability of self-reported infidelity in committed relationships for men and women, as reported by Schild et al (2020aSchild et al ( , 2020b in some of the samples that also went into the current analyses. A potential explanation for an association between sociosexual behavior and voice pitch might be attractiveness, in that higher attractiveness potentially increases the opportunity for having a higher number of sexual partners.…”

Dishonesty as a signal of trustworthiness: Honesty-Humility and trustworthy dishonesty

“…Honesty-Humility is defined as ‘the tendency to be fair and genuine in dealing with others, in the sense of cooperating with others even when one might exploit them without suffering retaliation’ ([ 15 ]; p. 156). In line with this definition, Thielmann & Hilbig [ 4 , 7 ] found, across three studies, that people high in Honesty-Humility behaved more trustworthily than people low in Honesty-Humility (which was replicated in [ 39 ]). On the other hand, people high in Honesty-Humility also tend to behave in a more honest way than people low in Honesty-Humility (e.g.…”

Linking human male vocal parameters to perceptions, body morphology, strength and hormonal profiles in contexts of sexual selection

“…Such costs may include lower investment and perhaps risk of interpersonal violence. Low male f o has previously been linked to sexual infidelity 42,88,89,116 , and several lines of evidence suggest that phenotypic masculinity-and vocal masculinity in particular-indicate threat potential not only to same-sex competitors but also to potential mates. For example, images of male-on-female violence disrupted U.S. women's preferences for both masculine voices and faces 117 , and Colombian women with perceptions of greater local domestic violence was not found to be a significant mediator between height and physical dominance ratings in the present study, a meta-analysis using a random-effects model indicated a significant mediating effect, with f o mediating 44% of the relationship between height and physical dominance.…”

“…Accordingly, we predicted f o and P f to be independent predictors of both attractiveness (H7) and dominance (H8) ratings. 1 Schild et al 42 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ Indirect measures of mate quality and formidability. Previous studies 34,35 linked lower f o to higher circulating testosterone levels, and more recently this relationship was found to be stronger in men with lower cortisol levels 5 , a result seemingly consistent with the stress-linked immunocompetence handicap hypothesis that f o honestly signals a speaker's physical condition 36 .…”