I wonder how much things like voice pitch affects job status and wages. There is more and more evidence that people with lower voices are viewed as being more confident and better leaders than people with high-pitched voices. Surely that translates to better jobs and higher wages. The Atlantic has the latest research:
Study after study has suggested that low voices, “masculine” voices, are an asset to those seeking leadership roles, in politics and beyond. And that’s so in part because we don’t simply think of vocal pitch–the physical trait determined by the size of one’s larynx and the length and mass of one’s vocal folds–in terms of physicality. We prefer low voices because, we assume, voices say something far beyond the words they convey: We perceive men with lower-pitched voices to be more attractive and physically stronger–and also more competent and more trustworthy–than their less burly-voiced peers. And we perceive women with lower-pitched voices along the same lines (though we also tend to perceive them, tellingly, as less attractive than their Betty Boop-y counterparts).
What’s more, our preference for low-voiced leaders holds true, it seems, for those in–and seeking–traditionally “feminine” leadership roles. A new study, published in the journal PLOSOne, has documented a bias toward low-pitched voices even when the owners of those voices are seeking to lead female-dominated bodies like school boards and PTAs. “Overall,” the authors note, “contrary to research showing that perceptions of voice pitch can be influenced by social context, these results suggest that the influence of voice pitch on perceptions of leadership capacity is largely consistent across different domains of leadership.”
While feminists attribute wage gaps to misogyny and such, it would be nice to look at wage differentials across the voice spectrum. Take two men of equal education and experience and see which one earns more money. If the deeper-voiced man (or taller one) earns more money for the same work then we obviously have a dominance gap rather than a gender gap.
I wrote previously on a thought I had while working on a construction site with my dad.
During our time working in Texas, my dad and I worked with a job site foreman named Jeff, a big, hard-scrabble guy with a domineering personality and a gruff voice but with enough of a blunted edge to get you to like him. Jeff was an alpha persona for a particular line of work that requires bossing other men around.
The simple thought occurred to me while I was up on a scissor lift blocking out the side of a corrugated building: the percentage of female Jeff’s in the world – female job-site forepersons out of all forepersons- has to be very near zero. A female could not command the respect or light the right size fires under the right asses in order to make her way in this line of work. People just wouldn’t want to listen to her as readily as they do to Jeff which would render her an ineffective leader. When you consider the career paths of millions of people and the tiny nudges that push them up corporate ladders, we can clearly see why executive ranks are mostly dominated by men.
This is why feminists hate evolutionary psychology, though they hate it for the wrong reasons. Evo psych doesn’t justify sexism. Evo psych justifies choices that tend to fall along sexually bifurcated lines.
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Testosterone wins!
Unstoppable combination: low pitched voice and articulateness. Low mumblers are all too common but their perceived lack of intelligence limits their leadership effectiveness.
I think you are thinking about it too hard. On average, more females are whiny bitches than males.
From an evolutionary perspective, females and males are expected to have been selected for reproductive success. Since females give birth and are strongly involved in nurturing that they will have been selected for those tasks. Males, on the other hand, will have been selected for provisioning females.
Finally, feminists are dumb, whiny bitches.
Low pitch, articulate, controlled speech conveys that unflappable, manly leader vibe. Abe Lincoln was a high pitched squeaky voiced guy from the Midwest but in modern presentations, his voice is alwasy cool, calm, and deep. People are going to trust walking into darkness if the guy leading them sounds like he’s got it locked down. It’s the opposite of nervous energy or immaturity, which people infer from high pitched voices. As a kid, I took cues on how to react to something just from how my dad would tell me. Digesting the news my grandfather had a heart attack was a lot easier when my dad told me the information in a controlled, deeper tone. Had he been high pitched, I’d have thought the worst even if his words had been “He’s gonna be OK”.
This could possibly explain why no one had any respect for the former (female) HR director from my old company. She would run around all day and trill things in a super high-pitched voice like “Happy Fridaaaaaaay!” Problem was it was Tuesday afternoon.
Has this study been factored for race? Some races tend to have a lower pitch in their voice than others.
I once knew a guy who was built like a mac truck, tall and muscular, but he had a jarringly high-pitched voice. It was so incongruent, that you would have trouble listening to him speak for more than a few seconds. I remember he used to complain a lot about never getting opportunities to advance in his career, always being passed over, and I’m sure his voice had something to do with it. Just another cruel real-life example of how men are evolution’s experimental guinea pigs.
A high voice is a handicap, even more so than being short, but these high-voiced men overcame this defect: Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson (I know, he’s special), David Beckham, and Vladimir Putin.
Off the top of my head, high voiced rock stars: Jon Bon Jovi, Getty Lee (Rush), Dennis Deyoung (Styx). Also check out one hit wonder band Stelheart, song “I’ll Never Let You Go.” Shatters glasses, and awesome. Also, Christian rock band Stryper.
Jim Morrison hated his own voice. He envied what he described as Elvis Presley’s “sex-wise” voice and described his own as an adolescent’s.
PA, your list of high-pitched rock stars demonstrates why evolution continues to use men as experiments — sometimes it works out in a big big way. FWIW, I remember reading somewhere that most male rock singers sing in a higher pitch than they talk, and it was surmised that hte higher singing pitch acts as a mating call, similar to the higher pitch chirps of male birds trying to woo mates.
Sting.
The singer in Police. .
Last month Ricky Raw linked to a video where a young wife tried to order a hit on her husband. The wife was a former escort, a compulsive liar, and all-in-all an extreme case of the so-called cluster b personality disorder type. I was struck by the disconnect between the husband’s outward appearance (ex-con, swole, good-looking guido) and his voice, which was very high and reflected also in his speech mannerisms. I wondered why did he put a ring on a girl like that until his first interview came up. Seemed to be one of those guys whose deferential and meek temperament is a disastrous match for an emotional vampire.
Full story here: http://therawness.com/cluster-b-in-action/
I think PA is right that a high voice is a bigger minus than shortness, but at least you have more control over it. Although for singers, a high voice seems to function as a possible point of contrast. Or even a mating call, never really thought about it that way.. Prince’s Purple Rain outro might be actually just that, you can sense the girls’ arousal in the audience if you’ve witnessed it live. And since we’re commenting on a blog with a name like this, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has his share of groupies despite a skinny frame, an asymmetrical face and a high whine of a voice. But those are high-profile guys, fame is an aphrodisiac in itself.
On a more pedestrian level, I play and sing in a local group, and my comfortable singing register is about half an octave higher than my speech. For some reason it’s much easier to keep in tune when singing a bit higher, and this is commonly known by music teachers. I can actually do a decent falsetto too, girls seem to find that attractive as well.
ya got a mouth for war?