Vocal modulation in human mating and competition

Abstract

The human voice is dynamic, and people modulate their voices across different social interactions. This article presents a review of the literature examining natural vocal modulation in social contexts relevant to human mating and intrasexual competition. Altering acoustic parameters during speech, particularly pitch, in response to mating and competitive contexts can influence social perception and indicate certain qualities of the speaker. For instance, a lowered voice pitch is often used to exert dominance, display status and compete with rivals. Changes in voice can also serve as a salient medium for signalling a person's attraction to another, and there is evidence to support the notion that attraction and/or romantic interest can be distinguished through vocal tones alone. Individuals can purposely change their vocal behaviour in attempt to sound more attractive and to facilitate courtship success. Several findings also point to the effectiveness of vocal change as a mechanism for communicating relationship status. As future studies continue to explore vocal modulation in the arena of human mating, we will gain a better understanding of how and why vocal modulation varies across social contexts and its impact on receiver psychology. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part I)’.

Musicality in human vocal communication: an evolutionary perspective

“…Choosing a partner with musical abilities would be appealing and relevant if it implies a capacity to bond and empathize with infants and other members of the community, and to produce offspring with these abilities. This could explain the role of vocal modulation—such as an increase in f 0 variability, analogous to that of IDS—during courtship [ 8 , 11 ] and its detection and preference by listeners [ 8 ].…”

“…In human language contexts, musicality seems to be required to perceive f 0 contours, of which variability in fundamental frequency ( f 0 variability) modulation seems to be a good indicator [8][9][10][11]211]. While most evidence points toward an important role of f 0 modulation in courtship contexts and mate choice, new lines of evidence have highlighted the importance of f 0 variability modulation and other forms of musicality in more general contexts, including the recently reported association between f 0 variability and cooperativeness [212], and the role of musicality in allowing individuals to capture the nuances of linguistic non-verbal aspects (e.g.…”

“…(vii) If musicality is cued in non-musical contexts by changes in pitch variability, as indicated in courtship studies of voice modulation (e.g. [8][9][10][11]), then the ability to detect these subtle modulations should be dependent on pitch discrimination skills; any potential benefit of such vocal modulations would be limited by the listener's capacity to perceive such changes. (viii) In couples with children, pitch discrimination skills of each parent should be positively associated with satisfaction with their partner as a mother or father.…”

“…Finally, we propose a theoretical model for the evolution of musicality, which provides an explanatory and testable framework for explaining newly emerged findings in human acoustic communication. Beyond IDS, recent research has shown that contextual vocal modulation is important (reviewed in the previous issue (part I) by Hughes & Puts [ 8 ]). For example, fundamental frequency variability (commonly measured as f 0 SD or f 0 CV) is modulated and plays an important role in courtship contexts (e.g.…”

Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact

“…Notably, by focusing on musicality, the proposed model allows for the possibility that musicality may predate music. Moreover, alongside evidence that vocal cues of expressivity also drive the perception of emotion in music [5] and that pitch modulation plays a role in human mating [1], the model illustrates that musicality is important beyond the realm of music, playing a role in domains like infant-directed speech [6,13], courtship and other language abilities.…”