Hi all,
Just a curious question that I will pose as broad as possible due to the fact that I don’t really know how well known The Straight Dope is through-out the world or if any of the people in those countries understand English well enough to respond to my question.
I DO realize that “vocal attraction” is as inconsistent as “visual attraction” it’s just one part of the entire attraction process. So please respond to this question at its most fundamental level and understand that I’m already aware that not ALL women ANYWHERE (in 1 region ) are attracted to a man with a deep voice.
That said, my question is: “In what countries is it considered sexy for a man to posses a deep/ low voice?”
My WAG is that a deep voice, as something suggestive of masculinity, is basically universally attractive (though not something many women would specifically look for).
Of course, as always with these things, it will break down at the extremes – not every woman would find Barry White’s voice attractive. And there are accents people associate with a deep voice that many people don’t like (e.g. Birmingham UK), but in general I suspect a deep voice would be an asset for most men anywhere.
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Actually what kind of voice makes a woman more attractive is probably a more interesting situation. Because there you have competing factors; some that might tend to make a high voice attractive and some a low voice.
Well, testosterone is causally linked to the voice deepening in pubescent males, and castration was performed on boys to keep their voices at that angelic soprano timbre, I think it’s reasonable to assume that a deep male voice is a marker of male fertility and, like shoulder width, increased muscle mass, and body/facial hair, is a sign of masculinity and heterosexual women would find it attractive on a sub-cultural level.
Interestingly enough, here’s a study that shows a tribal group of women consider deep-voiced men more attractive when they are fertile (and haven’t given birth recently) but prefer higher timbred male voices when they are nursing. The same researcher found that deep-voiced men fathered more children than higher voiced men. The lower the voice, the more children they had.
The preference of nursing women for men with higher pitched voices may be explained by this paper, which posits that beta males used long term monogamy as a successful strategy to reproduce. That is, men perceived as less masculine were still able to father children once they offered to settle down with the mother of their child(ren) and provide for them over a long period.
The first two studies were conducted using the Hazda people, a hunter-gatherer tribe in southern Africa, because they are considered to be psychologically uninfluenced by the culture of civilization. That is, their preferences speak directly towards reproductive (and hence, evolutionary) success.
When I have a really bad flu-related cough, my voice deepens to almost being a bass, or safely baritone at least. People usually make positive comments. I almost wish I had the flu all the time, or could do a simple surgical procedure to alter my throat permanently for a lower voice.
Here’s a country rundown for deep voice from most treasured to lesser emphasis on deepness:
Russia
Mexico
United Arab Emirates
Serbia
Khazurkistan
Lower Moldavia
Greece
Congo
Tibet
Italy
Spain
Liechtenstein
Belgium
Germany
Kuwait
United States of America
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Libya
Sweden
Canada
Japan
Venezuala
Luxembourg
Norway
Cuba
Turkey
Israel
United Kingdom
Morocco
Peru
Brazil
Austria
France
Trinidad and Tobago
Thailand
Australia
Czechoslovakia
Turkmenistan
Ukraine
Denmark
Argentina
Jamaica
Iceland
Iran
New Zealand
Holland
China
India
Portugal
Singapore
Poland
Greenland
Antartica
I meant no snark, but yes, it is a cultural difference. Male voices on TV and entertainment are “deep” both here and there. But normal speaking voices of American men often sound to a little too deep to the Dutch. They do sound, a bit, like the voices are straining themselves.
And it is not just men. Americans, on average, associate deeper voices with more status in men and women. I woman CEO still has to sound female, (no Barry White impersonaters) but her chances are better if she doesn’t sound like Pipsquiek, like a Japanese woman. So many American women also sound to the Dutch ear like they are straining their voices to sound too deep.
Thinking it sounds too deep is one thing, but assuming that people are straining seems weird. You can strain and make your voice low (it sounds like that guy with the tracheotomy on South Park) but it sounds completely different from how most Americans talk. If anything, speaking lower takes less effort, as there’s more resistance to vibration in the vocal chords the higher you speak.
And are you saying that Dutch people don’t mind squeaky voices? Because I’ve never heard a Dutch woman sound squeaky.
Spain for sure (and I see that it’s pretty close to the top in GreenElf’s list).
Constantino Romero claims that his wife says the smartest idea of his life was to ask her to marry him over the phone; there was a PhD thesis proving that movies where he dubs one of the main characters (it may be the protagonist or not) consistently bring in more money than those where someone else dubs the same actor - whether this is because of his voice or because those movies which didn’t hire him had lower budgets and/or worse production values, the thesis writer could not tell. People consistently rate the same actor much sexier when the voice is his than when it’s someone else’s, even though he usually pitches it higher than his natural speaking voice; I’ve heard him speak “normally” and he makes your average basso profundo sound like a tenor.