Impress With A Higher Pitched Voice
Christopher Philip
Research by Coren Apicella and David Feinberg has tied female preferences for voice pitch to her current sexual status in primitive tribe; Hazda.
The Hazda occupy a remote savannah-woodland area in northern Tanzania around Lake Eyasi and subsist on game hunted through bow and arrow as well as foods foraged including berries baobab fruit and tubers.
They found through their research that both men and women from the Hazda hunter-gatherers tribe rated lower pitched voices in the opposite sex as being better at acquiring resources. Men were also discerning, preferring women with higher voice pitches in women for marriage. Interestingly women were most selective for male voice qualities if they were breastfeeding. Specifically, while breastfeeding, the women preferred higher pitched male voices whereas women not currently breastfeeding preferred men with lower voices.
They explain their findings by stating that “testosterone is considered a costly signal
associated with dominance, heritable immunity to infection and low paternal investment, women’s preferences potentially reflect a trade-off between securing good genes and paternal investment.”
Testosterone is linked not only to high muscularity necessary in collecting costly resources including meat, it also has a secondary affect on the male voice serving to deepen it.
Therefore, while a deeper voice is a marker for the ability and potential to acquire resources before birthing an infant, it becomes a potential hazard after the fact as it may cause a man to stray due to higher sex drive or to act out aggressively potentially putting her or baby at risk.
In other words, men who are willing to increase their voice pitch and soften it with infants present, is likely to be a good caregiver over one whose voice remains deep.
On the other hand, they say that men’s preferences for higher pitched female voices is probably the result of evolved strategies to maximize selection for fecundity. It is noted that women’s higher pitched voices is likely connected to higher levels of estrogen which ties into the ability to conceive.
The researchers say that while foraging is important in women, the ability to produce children is paramount and this is linked to a higher pitch due to its connection to youth and femininity.
In other words “marrying the best gatherer does not increase a man’s reproductive success as much as marrying a woman with greater reproductive value and/or a hormonal profile that signals fecundity,” say the researchers in their paper.
Applying The Findings
While the study was conducted on hunter-gatherers, previous research has found these very same principles in Western populations.
The message is quite conclusive, men should lower their voices to attract women and then subsequently raise their voice (soften their pitch) after their wife conceives.
Women, on the other hand, should use a softer voice pitch to display feminine characteristics showcasing their youth and fecundity, in order to attract more desirable men.
Image Credit: Woodlouse
Resources
Apicella, Coren L. and David R. Feinberg. Voice Pitch Alters Mate-Choice-Relevant Perception in Hunter–Gatherers. Proc. R. Soc. B. 2019. 276: 1077–1082
doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.1542