Vocal pitch can do more than just call attention - it can also influence other people, a new study has revealed.
It seems that vocal signals tend to reveal more than emotions, an earlier study has similarly found that a laughter's vocal pitch differs depending on the relationship status of those who are interacting.
In this new study, researchers have found that lowering vocal pitch early in the conversation can influence other people. Those who lower their vocal pitch at the start of the interaction are more likely to influence and dominate than those who used higher vocal pitch.
University of Illinois Psychology professor and lead researcher Joey Cheng, together with Harvard University and University of British Columbia researchers conducted two experiments.
In the initial part of the experiment, 191 study participants aged 17 to 52 were asked to individually rank 15 items that they may need to survive a disaster on the moon. Afterwards, they were asked to work on the same task in a small group. The interactions and conversations were examined using phonetic analysis software.
The team also took into consideration how individual answers converged to arrive at a group's final answer. They have observed that individuals who have deep voices at their first and third utterance are seen as more dominant and influential.
Cheng said that the study allowed them to gain insight on how humans use voices to assert their status. In the past, social status is commonly communicated through posture.
"But this study clearly shows that there is something about the voice that's very interesting and very effective as a channel of dynamically communicating status," she said.
To reduce the influence of facial and age intimidation, the second part of the experiment with 274 participants aged 15 to 61, were instructed to listen to recordings of a person saying three statements. The vocal pitch of the recording was manipulated to decrease or increase between the first and third statements.
"[W]e found that when the voice in the recordings goes down in pitch, people judge the person as wanting to be more influential, more powerful, more intimidating or more domineering. But they don't think the person is interested in gaining more respect," Cheng said.
Based on the same data, the researchers deduced that those who dominated a conversation were not viewed as dominant or prestigious persons, but are instead seen as admirable individuals.
Cheng postulated that dominance and prestige are significant strategies to cause behavioral influence over someone, but said that changing vocal pitch to appear dominant does not equate to earning more respect from other people.
She explained that their study shows that individuals - when placed in a group, automatically divides themselves into followers and leaders. There is always a hierarchy that, as the study found, can be asserted using vocal signals.
The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Photo: Chip Griffin | Flickr
