What’s the appeal of deep voices in men?

There&#x27;s more to this than the article covers; low pitches in music are appealing even if there aren&#x27;t vocals. Playing a low note along with the same note an octave up just feels <i>powerful</i>. The lowest note of a chord gets parsed by the brain as a sort of anchor, which is why you can play CEG on a piano, take your thumb off the C, put your little finger on the next higher C, and it sounds different. There&#x27;s got to be something going on in the lizard-brain that parses high and low notes, similar to how music in general is so attractive, but it&#x27;s not easily explainable what that is.

I have a deeper voice and in the workplace this appears to be an advantage. Hard to test it scientifically, but it seems my colleagues listen more intently when I speak than they do to others.<p>This could be due to other factors but I&#x27;ve had multiple female colleagues &#x2F; contractors comment on my voice and suggest I record audiobooks (I have).

Low frequencies are better for undirected long distance communication (hunting in a group, especially as a leader), while higher pitch is better for directed short distance talking (gossiping &#x2F; P2P socializing).

&gt; &quot;In voice pitch, we are looking at more like 60 percent [difference between men and women].&quot;<p>Is this speaking in raw frequency? If so, I think it is overstated. A 50% reduction in frequency is only one octave, which is 10% of the range of the human ear. And a 50% increase in pitch (from men to women, which is what I think they are saying based on other sources on human voice pitch) is only a 5th, the interval in the Star Wars theme, or &#x27;God Rest, ye merry gentlemen,&#x27; which really isn&#x27;t that much.<p>&gt; According to Puts, this fits with the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis, which states that since testosterone takes away energy from the immune system, only men in the best of health—whose immune systems are not suffering due to physiological stress—can afford to develop testosterone-dependent traits.<p>Well I guess my autoimmune disorders explain why I&#x27;m a tenor. Oh well, that means I get the best arias.<p>For most people, I&#x27;ve found that what they call a &#x27;deeper&#x27; voice is simply a more resonant voice. There&#x27;s a video where Tom Scott is trying to sing. He sings a note more resonantly, and he thinks he dropped down the octave. But he actually stayed at the same pitch.[0] So I wonder if that is why &#x27;deeper&#x27; voices are perceived as more confident, simply because the people are speaking at roughly the same pitch but are speaking more loudly and more resonantly.<p>I also question a bit whether deep voices really are more appealing on a society-wide basis, maybe for sexual attraction purposes, though I have some thoughts on that too.[1] But, most male singers that have been prized as stars sing higher. It&#x27;s a meme now that all male pop singers sing way up in the stratosphere, but it&#x27;s been true historically too--the tenors got the best arias most of the time. There are certainly lower-voiced outliers (Bing Crosby comes to mind), but the &#x27;stars&#x27; so to speak have often been higher-voiced.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;2QKPQ6JYVhU?t=439" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;2QKPQ6JYVhU?t=439</a><p>[1]: I remember being inexplicably taken when I watched <i>Mindhunter</i> by the male lead. I took a straw poll of several gay men I knew, and they all said that Jonathan Groff was sexy specifically for his voice, which is indeed quite high, noticeably so even just casually viewing his movies. Obviously, this anecdata doesn&#x27;t undo the actual research in the article, but I do think it is a bit more complicated than presented here.

In general, any trait associated with a given gender is more attractive the more &quot;saturated&quot; that trait is in a representative of that gender. Men generally have deeper voices, are taller, more muscular than women, so the more of that trait a man has, the more attractive it is. In woman, I&#x27;m sure you can fill in some traits. Of course, there is an upper limit on any such trait where at a certain level it becomes grotesque. Women like men who are manly, and vice versa. In general.

Deep voice = low frequency sound = big resonant cavity (vocal tract) = big and strong animal. So it&#x27;s wired up in our brains that deep voice means strength.

Like physicality, deep voices have a practical utility. Specifically, human hearing is biased towards the low notes, and it&#x27;s easier to hear a low-f signal through high-f noise than to hear a high-f signal through low-f noise. This is due to the anatomy of the cochlea, where high pitches only strike the early hairs but low pitches strike all of the hairs -- this is also why you tend to lose high-frequency hearing first.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cochlea#Hearing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cochlea#Hearing</a><p>So, a man with a deeper voice has, quite literally, an easier time being heard. This also means that women, at least usually, have to speak louder than men do in order to be heard in noisy or crowded environments -- a side-effect of otic anatomy that may underlie certain stereotypes.

Speaking as a man with a naturally deep speaking and singing voice that&#x27;s been roughened by decades of smoking, drinking whiskey, etc., it definitely, uh, works, and has worked across cultural boundaries.<p>But it&#x27;s also true for women, to a point. Personally, I find huskier voices on women - a la Emma Stone - much sexier, all other things being equal. But I also find squeaky voices irritating.<p>Totally subjective, I guess. Whatever the psychoevolutionary rationale, I can tell you that it most definitely works in my favor and has since my voice broke in high school. :-D

Probably anecdotal but I&#x27;ve noticed my kids when they were babies would noticeably calm down when I rumbled my voice in the deeper tones, maybe the cavemen of old cooing the kids in situations of danger attracted more attention in a matriarcal society?, or maybe the &quot;beat box&quot; quality of the lower tones just helped with music, dancing

Culture. Operas originally relegated bass and bass-baritones to comedic buffoon roles, with prominent parts reserved for tenors, falsettists, and the extreme of the castrati. Modern performances often transpose these hero parts to much lower ranges for contemporary tastes.

Regarding the limits to the attractiveness of a very low voice, my pet theory is that they start to sound too mellow and like they belong to an inactive person. Someone who can absorb the stress of the day, be alert and active, and still have a deep voice, stands out, and those men are going to be physiologically forced out of the lowest ranges after spending time upright even if they don&#x27;t tighten in response to stress. Again, just a pet theory, mostly based on past colleagues whose voices almost put me to sleep.

What an amazingly well-written essay. I love finding things like this on the internet (or print, though I guess I find print on the internet too nowadays). This just improved my day!

I wonder if there has been any research done into pitch modulation of the human voice due to cultural pressure to &quot;get ahead&quot;<p>An extreme example would be of Elizabeth Holmes&#x27; faux deep voice in interviews when her actual speaking voice would be an octave or so higher<p>My speaking voice for example is about five or six semitones deeper than my tessitura when singing - and I&#x27;m not sure if that was developmental or genetic

The question also leads to &quot;why vocal fry in young women&quot; and &quot;how strongly do babies preference pitch to mother over father&quot;

Deep sounds travel further. I wonder if this made better leaders during hunter gatherer times. Like to command your tribesmen by yelling to them and attack that mammoth from behind.<p>Or it’s simply that deep voices mean a larger pharynx, which is a proxy for more testosterone.

Interesting to read the comments, noticing how the word &quot;sex&quot;, which identifies a person as male or female and is based on the reality of that person&#x27;s body, has completely been replaced by the word &quot;gender&quot;, which is purely imaginative and made up, with no base in actual reality.<p>Reminds me of how empathy, which is something people are born with and raised out of, has been replaced with morals, which is something taught by &quot;the system&quot; as a replacement.

Always apply simple heuristic: Big T! Of course there will be divergences, but it always returns to the baseline.

Hey, I&#x27;m short and not in the best shape... but at least I&#x27;ve got my deep voice.

So as a man is there any practical way to deepen one&#x27;s voice?

Probably because women find it attractive in men. The same reason men have heavier jaws.