Human Vocal Attractiveness as Signaled by Body Size Projection

What Makes a Female Voice Attractive?

Vocal attractiveness is highly relevant both for speech technology and for our basic understanding of speech prosody. Yet our knowledge about it is still very limited, and this is particularly true in regard to female voice. The present study explores the nature of female vocal attractiveness by exploring a mechanism that has been shown to be effective in encoding emotions. In a perception expe...

Manipulations of fundamental and formant frequencies influence the attractiveness of human male voices

In human voices, low fundamental frequency is thought to be a cue to masculinity and reproductive capability and large vocal tracts are associated with large body size of the speaker. Female preferences for males with low fundamental frequencies and large vocal tract lengths are potentially adaptive. Although sexually dimorphic characteristics of male voices have been studied, the impact of man...

Body size projection by voice quality in emotional speech—Evidence from Mandarin Chinese

This study attempts to extend the line of research on using body size projection theory to account for emotional speech. It is predicted by the theory that anger is expressed by projecting a large body size with low pitch, rough voice and long vocal tract; happiness is expressed by projecting a small body size with high pitch, breathy voice and short vocal tract. Ten native speakers of Mandarin...

Human Mate Selection Based on Developmental Stability as Signaled Through Physical Attractiveness: An Assessment of the Traits Used to Determine Attractiveness and the Evolutionary Mechanisms for their Development

Different Vocal Parameters Predict Perceptions of Dominance and Attractiveness

Low mean fundamental frequency (F(0)) in men's voices has been found to positively influence perceptions of dominance by men and attractiveness by women using standardized speech. Using natural speech obtained during an ecologically valid social interaction, we examined relationships between multiple vocal parameters and dominance and attractiveness judgments. Male voices from an unscripted dat...