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Women’s own voice pitch predicts their preferences for masculinity in men’s voices
Vukovic, J; Jones, BC; DeBruine, LM; Feinberg, DR; Smith, FG; Little, AC; Welling, L; Main, J
Behavioral Ecology. 21(4)767-772
Previous studies have found that indices of women’s attractiveness
predict variation in their mate preferences. For example, objective
measures of women’s attractiveness (waist-hip ratio and other-rated
facial attractiveness) are positively related to the strength of their
preferences for masculinity in men’s faces. Here, we examined whether
women’s preferences for masculine characteristics in men’s voices were
related to their own vocal characteristics. We found that women’s
preferences for men’s voices with lowered (i.e., masculinized) pitch
versus raised (i.e., feminized) pitch were positively associated with
women’s own average voice pitch. Since voice pitch is positively
correlated with many indices of women’s attractiveness, our findings
suggest that the attractiveness of the perceiver predicts variation in
women’s preferences for masculinity in men’s voices. Such
attractiveness-contingent preferences may be adaptive if attractive
women are more likely to be able to attract and/or retain masculine
mates than relatively unattractive women are. Interestingly, the
attractiveness-contingent masculinity preferences observed in our study
appeared to be modulated by the semantic content of the judged speech
(positively valenced versus negatively valenced speech), suggesting that
attractiveness-contingent individual differences in masculinity
preferences do not necessarily reflect variation in responses to simple
physical properties of the stimulus. |
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