(khoahoc.tv) – Both women and men prefer female leaders with lower voices over those with higher voices, even in traditional female leadership positions, according to a new study.
When given a choice between a candidate with a high pitch or a low pitch for the position of Parent-Teacher Association president or school board member, people tend to select those with lower pitches. This research is detailed online in the journal PLoS One.
The researchers used hypothetical candidates and therefore could not determine how many actual candidates were evaluated based on their voices, but the results suggest that the pitch of a voice might be one of the factors people use to assess candidates, co-author Casey Klofstad, a political scientist at the University of Miami, stated.
“The physiological characteristics that determine our voice pitch”, Klofstad said. “It’s interesting that your physiology, a characteristic that may or may not relate to your leadership ability, helps you attain a leadership position.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Typically, people use voice pitch as a cue for personal characteristics, Klofstad told LiveScience. “Women with higher voices are perceived as sexually attractive, while men with deeper voices are seen as strong, appealing, and socially adept,” he explained. “Taking that idea a step further, a woman with a lower voice may be assumed to possess more masculine traits, such as dominance and power.”
In a study published earlier this year, Klofstad and his team found that both women and men preferred candidates with deeper voices for political offices. However, they wondered if this preference extended to positions like Parent-Teacher Association president or school board member.
“Leadership positions that involve caring for the welfare of families and children are often held by women,” Klofstad told LiveScience.
To investigate, Klofstad and his colleagues asked a group of 71 college students to vote on school board member candidates from 10 pairs of female and 10 pairs of male candidates based solely on their voices. The pairs each spoke just one sentence: “I hope you vote this November.” (For each pair, voters had to decide between two versions of the same voice, which had been manipulated to have a higher or lower pitch).
The researchers then applied the same method in an experiment to choose candidates for the Parent-Teacher Association presidency.
About three-quarters of the time, both men and women preferred female candidates with deeper voices. Approximately 60% of the time, men preferred other men with more masculine voices, while women showed no preference regarding the pitch of male voices.
The results indicate that even for traditional leadership positions held by women, people tend to favor women with more masculine, less shrill voices. Female leaders like U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and minority leaders like Nancy Pelosi have slightly deeper voices, and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher actually trained her voice at the beginning of her political career to avoid being perceived as “shrill and screechy,” Klofstad noted.
As a follow-up, Klofstad and his colleagues plan to continue their research to determine whether this preference occurs in real-life scenarios.
“If so, politicians should undergo vocal training before campaigning,” Klofstad said.
