A growing body of research has examined how voice characteristics advertise personal dimensions relevant in mate competition and mate choice. This work has centered on two key voice features, namely, fundamental frequency (F0) and formants (Fn), and has consistently found that speakers with low F0, low Fn, or both are rated as being larger, more masculine, and more attractive if men but less attractive if women. However, this consistency in listeners' perceptions is not matched by an equivalent consensus in how these mate-relevant dimensions are causally related or signaled by voice characteristics. Consequently, it is critical to test whether the strong correlations in listeners' perceptions reflect reliable causal relationships between these dimensions or, alternatively, whether they reflect some perceptual or cognitive nonindependence, for example, “what is large is masculine” and “what is small is feminine.” To test this latter possibility, we report detailed analyses of interdependence in listeners' ratings of perceived size, masculinity or femininity, and attractiveness of natural and manipulated voices of the opposite sex. We found strong correlations in listeners' ratings of all three dimensions, confirming past research. Principal component analysis corroborated these interrelationships but also revealed some independence in women's ratings of men's attractiveness and additional (but weaker) independence in men's ratings of women's size. We discuss possible implications for future research on the evolved psychology of voice and whether and how it reflects adaptive functional heuristics for discriminating mates.
There has been a recent surge in voice-related research in evolutionary psychology focused on the role that voice characteristics might play in advertising personal dimensions relevant in mate competition or mate choice (Feinberg, 2008). This trend is a natural outgrowth of the longer history of related research on the face, which is hypothesized to be a target of sexual selection and to play an important role in people's assessments of relevant characteristics of potential rivals or mates (Fink and Penton-Voak, 2002, Perrett, 2010, Perrett et al., 1998 and Rhodes, 2006). Both the voice and face are sexually dimorphic traits, and their development depends in part on pubertal exposure to hormones (e.g., testosterone) and, as such, might provide cues to an individual's health or quality (Feinberg, 2008, Gangestad and Scheyd, 2005 and Thornhill and Gangestad, 1999).
Previous research on listeners' assessments of unseen speakers has produced a variety of interesting findings, among the most consistent being strong correlations in listeners' ratings of different mate-relevant dimensions, such as body size, masculinity or femininity, and overall attractiveness (Bruckert et al., 2006, Collins, 2000, Feinberg et al., 2005, Feinberg et al., 2008, Hodges-Simeon et al., 2010, Hughes et al., 2004 and Jones et al., 2010). Specifically, men tend to rate small-sounding women as being more feminine and also as being more attractive, while women tend to rate men who sound bigger as being both more masculine and more attractive. These patterns certainly confirm lay intuitions and are commensurate with some theoretical predictions; however, they also conceal some fundamental ambiguities that need to be resolved.
