Men's evaluations of women's speech in a simulated dating context
Item
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Title
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Men's evaluations of women's speech in a simulated dating context
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:3d6b6d72a88d:11503
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identifier
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11977
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Creator
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Karthikeyan, Sethu,
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Contributor
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John L. Locke
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Communication | Social psychology | Language | attractiveness | evolutionary psychology | mate-selection and dating | speech | vocal adjustments | voice pitch
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Abstract
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The study adopted an evolutionary approach to advance and test directional hypotheses on changes in women's vocal attractiveness and vocal pitch as a function of the varying fertility levels. A pre-recorded male speech sample that was selected as sexually attractive among a few others by an independent group of ten female raters was used to simulate a dating context. A separate group of thirty six normally cycling women responded to the masculinized and feminized versions of the male speech sample during the high and low fertility phases of the menstrual cycle. The cycle phases were determined by the menstrual cycle details provided by the women on a screening questionnaire, and the phases were confirmed by self-administered commercially available ovulation tests. Every woman's speech sample included a pre-decided made up phone number given as a response to the male's request for the same. This number was extracted from each of the women's responses, and was evaluated by men for attractiveness. The phone numbers were analyzed acoustically to obtain the average fundamental frequencies. The results revealed that consistent with one of the hypotheses, the male listeners gave higher attractiveness ratings to the females' speech samples collected in the high fertility phase than the ones from the low fertility phase. Overall, the average speaking fundamental frequency was relatively low for the samples from the high-fertility phase, which was partly contrary to another hypothesis in terms of the hypothesized direction of the pitch difference between the fertility phases. Also contrary to expectation was the finding that the masculinity of the male voice failed to affect the women's speech; the explanation offered mainly pertains to a study design issue. The results have been discussed by integrating evidence for situation-dependent vocal adjustments involving pitch, ethological explanations on the use of high and low pitch as potential signals of submissiveness and dominance/maturity, and evolutionary arguments explaining the purported dual nature of female sexuality.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Speech and Hearing Sciences
