Content matters: Cyclic effects on women's voices depend on social context

Klatt, Wilhelm K.; Mayer, Boris; Lobmaier, Janek S. (2020). Content matters: Cyclic effects on women's voices depend on social context. Hormones and behavior, 122, p. 104762. Elsevier 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104762

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Women's voices reportedly sound more attractive during the fertile days compared to the non-fertile days of their menstrual cycle. Here we investigated whether the speech content modulates the cyclic changes in women's voices. We asked 72 men and women to rate how interested they were in getting to know the speaker based on her voice. Forty-two naturally cycling women were recorded once during the late follicular phase (high fertility) and once during the luteal phase (low fertility) while speaking sentences of neutral and social content. Listeners were more interested in getting to know the speakers when hearing sentences with social content. Furthermore, raters were more interested in getting to know the speakers when these were recorded in the late follicular than in the luteal phase, but only in sentences with social content. Notably, levels of reproductive hormones (EP ratio) across the cycle phases did not significantly predict the preference for late follicular voices, but echoing the perceptual ratings, there was a significant EP ratio x speech content interaction. Phonetic analyses of mean fundamental frequency (F0) revealed a main effect of menstrual cycle phase and speech content but no interaction. Employing an action-oriented task, the present study extends findings of cycle-dependent voice changes by emphasising that speech content critically modulates fertility effects.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Social Neuroscience and Social Psychology
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Cognitive Psychology, Perception and Methodology
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology

UniBE Contributor:

Mayer, Boris, Lobmaier, Janek Simon

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology
100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology

ISSN:

0018-506X

Publisher:

Elsevier

Funders:

[42] Schweizerischer Nationalfonds

Language:

English

Submitter:

Janek Simon Lobmaier

Date Deposited:

10 Jun 2020 16:35

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:33

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104762

PubMed ID:

32353446

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.144400

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/144400

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