Adaptations in humans for assessing physical strength from the voice

Adaptations in humans for assessing physical strength from the voice
Aaron Sell et al.; 2010
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2982226/


Abstract

Recent research has shown that humans, like many other animals, have a specialization for assessing fighting ability from visual cues. Because it is probable that the voice contains cues of strength and formidability that are not available visually, we predicted that selection has also equipped humans with the ability to estimate physical strength from the voice. We found that subjects accurately assessed upper-body strength in voices taken from eight samples across four distinct populations and language groups: the Tsimane of Bolivia, Andean herder-horticulturalists and United States and Romanian college students. Regardless of whether raters were told to assess height, weight, strength or fighting ability, they produced similar ratings that tracked upper-body strength independent of height and weight. Male voices were more accurately assessed than female voices, which is consistent with ethnographic data showing a greater tendency among males to engage in violent aggression. Raters extracted information about strength from the voice that was not supplied from visual cues, and were accurate with both familiar and unfamiliar languages. These results provide, to our knowledge, the first direct evidence that both men and women can accurately assess men's physical strength from the voice, and suggest that estimates of strength are used to assess fighting ability.

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1. Average individual estimates of strength from the voice were accurate and highly significant across all six male samples ranging from γ = 0.18 to 31. This accuracy is similar to the accuracy of strength assessment from static visual images of the face, but lower than estimation from images of the body (Sell et al. 2009a).
2. Accuracy of strength estimation was similar across both familiar and unfamiliar languages.
3. While strength was accurately estimated from women's voices in both the US and Romanian samples, the effect was about half as large as for their male counterparts. The same pattern is found when assessing strength from visual images of the face (Sell et al. 2009a).
4. Estimates of strength were notably enhanced when both auditory and visual channels were available (see below).
5. Assessments of strength remained significant, controlling for both height and weight

Perceptions of Human Attractiveness Comprising Face and Voice Cues

Perceptions of Human Attractiveness Comprising Face and Voice Cues
Timothy Wells et al.; 2013


Abstract

In human mate choice, sexually dimorphic faces and voices comprise hormone-mediated cues that purportedly develop as an indicator of mate quality or the ability to compete with same-sex rivals. If preferences for faces communicate the same biologically relevant information as do voices, then ratings of these cues should correlate. Sixty participants (30 male and 30 female) rated a series of opposite-sex faces, voices, and faces together with voices for attractiveness in a repeated measures computer-based experiment. The effects of face and voice attractiveness on face-voice compound stimuli were analyzed using a multilevel model. Faces contributed proportionally more than voices to ratings of face-voice compound attractiveness. Faces and voices positively and independently contributed to the attractiveness of male compound stimuli although there was no significant correlation between their rated attractiveness. A positive interaction and correlation between attractiveness was shown for faces and voices in relation to the attractiveness of female compound stimuli. Rather than providing a better estimate of a single characteristic, male faces and voices may instead communicate independent information that, in turn, provides a female with a better assessment of overall mate quality. Conversely, female faces and voices together provide males with a more accurate assessment of a single dimension of mate quality.