Male Vocal Quality and Its Relation to Females’ Preferences

Alexandre Suire (1) , Michel Raymond (1) , Melissa Barkat-Defradas (1)

1 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier

In both correlational and experimental settings, studies on women's vocal preferences have reported negative relationships between perceived attractiveness and men's vocal pitch, emphasizing the idea of an adaptive preference. However, such consensus on vocal attractiveness has been mostly conducted with native English speakers, but a few evidence suggest that it may be culture-dependent. Moreover, other overlooked acoustic components of vocal quality, such as intonation, perceived breathiness and roughness, may influence vocal attractiveness. In this context, the present study aims to contribute to the literature by investigating vocal attractiveness in an underrepresented language (i.e., French) as well as shedding light on its relationship with understudied acoustic components of vocal quality. More specifically, we investigated the relationships between attractiveness ratings as assessed by female raters and male voice pitch, its variation, the formants' dispersion and position, and the harmonics-to-noise and jitter ratios. Results show that women were significantly more attracted to lower vocal pitch and higher intonation patterns. However, they did not show any directional preferences for all the other acoustic features. We discuss our results in light of the adaptive functions of vocal preferences in a mate choice context.

Mots clés: intonation; formants; fundamental frequency; attractiveness; breathiness; roughness; mate choice; mate

Domaines: Psychologie

Alexandre Suire, Michel Raymond, Melissa Barkat-Defradas. Male Vocal Quality and Its Relation to Females’ Preferences. Evolutionary Psychology: an International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior, 2019, 17 (3), pp.147470491987467. ⟨10.1177/1474704919874675⟩. ⟨hal-02352935⟩