Forget make-up, tan or wearing the LBD. There’s one way to instantly make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex – by lowering the tone of your voice.
Think of the sultry tones of Scarlet Johannson or Emma Stone and you’ve got yourself the winning formula to seem instantly more attractive. Research shows that women can manipulate their speech to sound even more attractive, according to a new study published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour.
Researchers at Albright College asked 40 college students (20 men and 20 women) to recite the numbers from 1-10 in their normal speaking voice. They later asked them to repeat the exercise but by manipulating their voice to sound more attractive. The students were then asked to repeat the exercise using tones that were confident, dominant and more intelligent.
The research then asked another set of 40 college students (again 20 men and 20 women) to listen to the various voices and rate each recording for attractiveness. Although women didn’t seem to find men more attractive with the various recordings, men found the women’s altered recordings a lot more attractive from the outset.
Researchers examined the new recordings, finding that women had chosen to slow down their speech, lower their pitch and increase their hoarseness when they were looking to portray a more attractive voice.
When women were actively making their voices sultrier, raters gave them an average attractiveness rating of 4.29 on a scale of 1-7, while their normal voices brought them in at an average score of 3.4.
The research was based on the fact that voices can predict biological factors that make someone a good mate, like body shape and age, so we’re wired to be more attracted to some than others.
So it can pay to do a bit of lip-service so…
