The Voice Gives It Away

Abstract

Abstract. Two experiments examined the impact of voice pitch on gender stereotyping. Participants listened to a text read by a female (Study 1; N = 171) or male (Study 2, N = 151) speaker, whose voice pitch was manipulated to be high or low. They rated the speaker on positive and negative facets of masculinity and femininity, competence, and likability. They also indicated their own gendered self-concept. High pitch was associated with the ascription of more feminine traits and greater likability. The high-pitch female speaker was rated as less competent, and the high-pitch male speaker was perceived as less masculine. Text content and participants’ gendered self-concept did not moderate the pitch effect. The findings underline the importance of voice pitch for impression formation.

Who should play the instrument?: Effects of pitch and loudness on children’s gender associations with musical instruments

“…Stronsick and colleagues (2018) reported that excerpts played in a traditionally feminine instrument timbre were rated as less feminine when presented in a low pitch than a high pitch (and vice versa). They interpreted their results as paralleling research in gender identification of human voices -the same gender-pitch links are observed (Krahé & Papakonstantinou, 2020;Krahé et al, 2021;Pernet & Belin, 2012). By around 6 years, children associate higher pitched voices with femininity and lower pitched voices with masculinity (Cartei et al, 2019;Nagels et al, 2020).…”

Your voice pitch speaks volumes about you: How voice pitch affects mind perception of the speakers

“…An alternative possible explanation is similar to the logic mentioned before that a male speaker with high experience can be regarded as violating gender stereotypes. A male speaker with higher pitched voice may also be perceived as violating gender stereotypes expectations (Krahé et al, 2021), and this may lead participants to be less favourable to the target speakers because people who deviate from gender stereotypic expectations can encounter backlash (Moss‐Racusin et al, 2010; Moss‐Racusin, 2014; Rudman & Phelan, 2008), and in turn suppressed the total effect on behavioural intentions. These possible suppressor effects were not a focus of the current research but awaits future inspection.…”

“…There are studies showing that the effect of voice pitch on social perception (e.g., stereotyping) varies by speaker's sex. For instance, Krahé et al (2021) found that the higher-(vs. lower-)pitched female speaker was rated as possessing more femininity but not masculinity, while the lower-(vs. higher-)pitched male speaker was rated higher on masculinity and lower on femininity. Furthermore, this research indicated different results of moderation by sex in listeners' stereotyping such that warmth ratings were higher for both higher-(vs. lower-)pitched female and male speakers, whereas competence ratings were higher for the lower-(vs. higher-)pitched female speaker only.…”

“…The fundamental frequency is measured by Hertz (Hz), and the higher the fundamental frequency, the higher the voice pitch. As one of the voice properties, pitch has been known to be used as a cue for impression formation and social judgements about the speaker (Pittam, 1987; Scherer, 1986), and there are reasons to suspect that voice pitch is another crucial factor in social perception (Krahé et al, 2021). Pisanski and Rendall (2011) showed that a lower pitched voice can cause listeners to perceive more masculinity in the speaker.…”

How voice transition and gender identity disclosure shape perceptions of trans men in the hiring process

“…Specifically, we considered studies looking at the interplay between voice‐based identity, masculinity, and gender stereotyping. Studies have demonstrated that vocal features are cues to gender stereotyping (Ko et al., 2006; Krahé et al., 2021; Krahé & Papakonstantinou, 2020) and that, in hiring situations, sounding masculine increased perceived competence, and this is more important than the candidate's actual gender (Ko et al., 2009). Together with the perception of masculine/feminine‐sounding speakers comes the recent work concerning the stigmatization of gay/lesbian‐sounding speakers.…”