Summary: Researchers found that people change their voice pitch depending on who they are speaking to and how dominant they feel. Vocal characteristics shift in response to perceived social status, with voices tending to become higher pitched when addressing someone perceived as more dominant.
Source: University of Stirling.
People commonly adjust the pitch of their voice based on their conversation partner’s perceived social status and their own sense of dominance, a study from the University of Stirling reports.
The psychology study, published in PLOS ONE, used a simulated job interview task to examine how speakers modulate vocal features—especially pitch—when interacting with listeners they judged to be high status, neutral, or low status.
Overall, participants raised their pitch when speaking to interviewers they perceived as higher status, regardless of their own self-rated social standing. According to Dr. Viktoria Mileva, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Stirling: “A deep, masculine voice often signals dominance, while a higher-pitched voice can convey submissiveness. When someone believes their interviewer is more dominant, they tend to raise their pitch. This may act as a nonverbal signal that they are not a threat and wish to avoid confrontation.”
Dr. Mileva added that these vocal shifts might be either conscious or unconscious, but in either case, voice characteristics are an important channel for communicating social status. The study found that both men and women adjust their pitch when speaking to people they consider dominant or prestigious.
The research also examined how a speaker’s own self-view affected vocal behavior. Participants who saw themselves as dominant—those who gain status through manipulation, coercion, or intimidation—were less likely to vary their pitch and tended to speak with a lower tone even when addressing someone of higher social status. In contrast, participants who rated themselves high in prestige—who believe others respect and value their opinions—did not change their speaking volume across different listeners. Maintaining consistent loudness may signal calmness and control.
Interview questions fell into three categories: introductory, personal, and interpersonal. Speakers lowered their pitch most in response to the more complex interpersonal questions, such as describing a workplace conflict. This suggests that people adjust vocal parameters not only according to the listener’s perceived status but also to the emotional or social complexity of the topic being discussed.
Dr. Mileva emphasized that signals of social status influence many aspects of human interaction, from facial and body cues to speech patterns and vocal tone. “Understanding these signals and their effects helps us better comprehend a fundamental part of human behavior,” she said.
Experts suggest that the vocal adjustments observed in this experiment are likely to apply in many real-life situations where perceived status differences exist, such as conversations with rivals on a sports field, interactions with supervisors or colleagues, and other everyday social encounters.
Study: Perceived differences in social status between speaker and listener affect the speaker’s vocal characteristics.
Authors: Juan David Leongómez, Viktoria R. Mileva, Anthony C. Little, and S. Craig Roberts.
Published in: PLOS ONE, June 2017.
Abstract
Non-verbal behaviors—voice characteristics included—serve as key channels for communicating social status. People can attain status through dominance (force, coercion, intimidation) or through prestige (skill, knowledge, respect). This study assessed within-subject differences in vocal parameters during simulated job interviews in which participants addressed dominant, prestigious, and neutral interviewers. Responses were elicited for introductory, personal, and interpersonal questions. Results showed clear vocal modulation when participants spoke to high-status targets: individuals, particularly those who perceived themselves as lower in dominance, increased fundamental frequency (F0) when addressing dominant and prestigious interviewers compared with neutral ones. Self-perceived prestige had less impact on vocal modulation than self-perceived dominance. Question type also influenced vocal characteristics, with larger changes for personal and interpersonal questions. The findings indicate that speakers adjust vocal features based on the perceived status of the listener and their own self-view.
Conclusion: People alter voice pitch and other vocal parameters in response to perceived social status differences, and these changes are moderated by speakers’ own dominance and prestige self-perceptions as well as the social complexity of the conversation.
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