Feinberg DR, Jones BC, Little AC, Burt DM & Perrett DI. Manipulations of fundamental and formant frequencies influence the attractiveness of human male voices. Animal Behaviour 69, 561-568. PDF Times Cited: 60

Attractiveness of women's faces, voices, bodies and odors appear to be inter-related, suggesting they reflect a common trait such as femininity. We invoked three novel approaches to test the interrelationships between female vocal and facial attractiveness and femininity. In study 1 we manipulated pitch and apparent vocal-tract length of women's voices to minimize confounds from other acoustic features such as jitter. We tested how these objective manipulations of female vocal femininity impact on men's preferences. Men preferred women's voices with raised pitch and decreased apparent vocal-tract length. In study 2 we examined the relationship between facial-metric femininity and voice pitch in 2 female populations. In both populations, facial-metric femininity correlated positively with pitch of voice. In study 3 we constructed facial averages from 2 populations of women with low and high-pitched voices and determined men's preferences for resulting composites. Men preferred averaged faces of women from both populations with higher pitched voices to those with lower pitched voices. Interrelationships between femininity and attractiveness of face and voice were independent of age. These findings suggest that cues to femininity in the voice and face cue underlying reproductive quality, independently of age.