Well, not so much, according to research. I’ve been considering whether cultural influences affect how voices are perceived and appreciated, mostly because I realise my perceptual preferences have developed from a purely western aesthetic. I began to think that perhaps I should pay closer attention to the norms of other countries/cultures/ethnicities.
I found an interesting journal article reporting the findings of an experiment comparing Finnish and Estonian male and female voices (Pajupuu, Hille, et al. The Effects of Culture on Voice Likeabilty, TRAMES, 2019, 23(73/68), 2, 239–257). This journal article quoted many other studies, the results into which I won’t delve. Instead, I will share broad ideas gleaned from these studies.
The authors state, “People with likable voices are considered socially attractive: friendly, competent, self-assured and trustworthy.” Agreeing with that premise, I was curious to know whether my instincts about what makes a voice sound like that were correct. I found the results both interesting and reassuring. Interesting in that many characteristics I thought would make a big difference to how pleasing a voice sounds, and which may vary from culture to culture, didn’t factor much at all. Reassuring in that the area I thought would be most important to address, especially when working with transgender voices, was concluded to be ubiquitously important.
So, what didn’t matter so much?
Similarity – There is something called similarity-attraction effect, where “people trust those who are similar to them.” But then, “foreign-accented speech can be perceived as more attractive than native-accented speech and speakers of a foreign language can be perceived as more attractive than speakers of the listeners’ native language.” But, according to Yiu, Edwin M.-L. et al., “voice qualities vary between languages, even in the same speaker… and familiarity of language increases how harshly the voices are judged.”
Voice pitch - For English speakers, it seems people want more of the extremes. Westerners prefer “men with voices a little lower than average and women with voices higher than average”. This preference for higher female voices is in contrast to the progressive lowering of speaking pitch in women’s voices over the last 50 years. (See my post, You may be closer than you think.) In fact, in Pajupuu’s study, pitch did not factor significantly at all.
Speech rate – Historically, it has been accepted that women speak more slowly than men, and consequently, this was a desired feature of feminine speech. However, a study of American female speakers found “likable voices are high, but also exhibit a fast speech rate and vocal fry” (Parker and Borrie, 2018).
Gender and age – Neither of these parameters made significant impact on whether a voice was considered likeable, although a higher pitch was associated with youthfulness.
So, if presence or absence of similarity, speaking pitch, rate of speech, gender and age are not significant, what characteristics make a voice pleasant and desirable?
Prosodic features - A study by Ding, et al. (2017, 2018) discovered “prosodic features in voices that direct listeners to prefer the same voices among both native and non-native speech.” Prosodic features relate to expressiveness of communication – frequency (pitch) variation, energy, fluctuation in loudness and articulation.
Context - Voice likability also depends on the context of the speech sample, e.g. conversational, lecture, interview, radio commentary, talk show, etc. These situation-specific speech styles are known as ‘phonogenre’. In studies that looked at these parameters, conversational style was considered to be most attractive and indifferent or lecture styles were least favourable.
Quality and timbre - Finally, Pajupuu’s study concluded, “Most differentiating parameters were related to voice quality and timbre.” These terms refer to the combination of acoustic parameters that make each voice unique. They result from the miniscule differences in the vocal tract and how each person manipulates the vocal tract to achieve resonance - the most nebulous area of voice work. Supporting this assertion, in this study, the colour or tone quality of voice was a feature of ‘likeability’ in voices. Amongst other studies, descriptors such as “darker” colour and “not nasal” were used to describe desirable features of voice quality.
This conclusion supports my instincts. Most every other feature of voice and speech is more important than pitch. It’s the combination of appealing speech pattern characteristics with an acoustic signal that is pleasing to the ear that results in a pleasant and authentic voice. This combination was proven to be effective and appreciated cross-culturally. Everyone likes the same thing – qualities that make a voice both interesting and pleasant to hear.