While the voice may appear to be the preferred medium for verbal communication, it is not simply a tool for mediating semantic information. Indeed, beyond the linguistic message it conveys, the voice is also an object of identity whose role is fundamental within human populations, insofar as it constitutes the preferred medium for social interaction. Modular and ostensibly dimorphic, the voice enables us to share our mental, emotional and affective state with others via an infinite number of nuances. Last but not least, the acoustic characteristics of the human voice, such as its pitch (low or high), melody (monotone or lilting), timbre (clear or deep), quality (breathy or hoarse) and rhythm (slow or fast), are the result of a complex interplay of biological, social and cultural factors that provide valuable information about the speaker, such as : gender, height and/or weight, age, socio-cultural background, sexual orientation and even personality traits such as cooperativeness. The work we are developing is based on the study of vocal preferences, and tests the hypothesis that voice is a sexually selected trait that functions, along with other components of attractiveness, as a reliable marker of phenotypic quality. In this context, we explore the links between voice and reproductive success; voice and sexual orientation; voice and perceived attractiveness; and voice and hormonal profile and health status.
References
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Suire, A., Raymond, M., & Barkat-Defradas, M. (2018). Vocal behavior within competitive and courtship contexts and its relation to mating success in humans. Evolution & Human Behavior 39, 684-691
Tognetti, A., Durand, V., Barkat-Defradas, M. Hopfensitz, A., (2019) Does he sound cooperative? Acoustic correlates of cooperativeness, British Journal of Psychology, 1-17 DOI:10.1111/bjop.12437.
Suire, A., Tognetti, A., Durand, V., Raymond, M., Barkat-Defradas, M. (2020). Speech acoustic features: a comparison of gay men, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women. Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 49:2575-2583.
Trouvain J. & Weiss, B., Barkat-Defradas, M., (2020), Voice attractiveness: Concepts, methods, and data (Barkat-Defradas, Weiss, Trouvain, Ohala), In Voice Attractiveness Studies on Sexy, Likable, and Charismatic Speakers, Weiss, B., J. Trouvain, M. Barkat-Defradas, J., Ohala (Eds), Springer Nature, pp. 3-16.
Barkat-Defradas, M. & Suire, A. (2020), The Evolution of vocal preferences in humans: a state of the art, In Voice Attractiveness Studies on Sexy, Likable, and Charismatic Speakers, Weiss, B., J. Trouvain, M. Barkat-Defradas, J., Ohala (Eds), Springer Nature, p. 42-55.
Suire, A., Raymond, M. & Barkat-Defradas, M., (2020), Voice, sexual selection and reproductive success, In Voice Attractiveness Studies on Sexy, Likable, and Charismatic Speakers, Weiss, B., J. Trouvain, M. Barkat-Defradas, J., Ohala (Eds), Springer Nature, 125-138.
