Subliminal

sides, tempting us to click the “Buy” button when we are most likely to obtain not only a mate but, for no extra (upfront) cost, also a child.

But there is still something to be explained. Why is it a deep voice, in particular, that attracts women? Why not a high, squeaky voice or one in mid-range? Was it just nature’s random choice, or does a deep voice correlate with male virility? We’ve seen that—in a woman’s eyes—a deep voice is considered indicative of men who are taller, hairier, and more muscular. The truth is, there is little or no correlation between a deep voice and any of those traits.¹⁰ However, studies show that what does correlate with a low- pitched voice is testosterone level. Men with lower voices tend to have higher levels of that male hormone.¹¹

It is difficult to test whether nature’s plan works—whether men with more testosterone really produce more children—because modern birth control methods prevent us from judging a man’s reproductive potential by the number of children he fathers. Still, a Harvard anthropologist and some colleagues found a way. In 2007 they traveled to Africa to study the voices and family size of the Hadza people, a monogamous hunter-gatherer population of about one thousand in the savannah woodlands of Tanzania, where men are still men, tubers are plentiful, and no one uses birth control. In those savannahs, the baritones indeed beat the tenors. The researchers found that while the pitch of women’s voices was not a predictor of their reproductive success, men with lower-pitched voices on average fathered more children.¹² A woman’s sexual attraction to a deep male voice does seem to have a neat evolutionary explanation. So if you’re a woman and you want a large family, follow your instincts and go for the Morgan Freeman type.

YOU’RE CERTAINLY MORE likely to satisfy an employee by saying, “I value you and will do everything I can to increase your salary” than by explaining, “I have to keep my budget down, and one of the easiest ways is to pay you as little as possible.” But you can also communicate either sentiment, though not the precise meaning, simply by the way you say it. That’s why some people can recount things like “He enjoyed chewing on plump grapes while speeding down a mountain in a monogrammed bobsled” and still give the impression of being profound, while others can say, “The large-scale geometry of the universe is determined by the density of the matter within it” and sound like they are whining. The pitch, timbre, volume, and cadence of your voice, the speed with which you speak, and even the way you modulate pitch and volume, are all hugely influential factors in how convincing you are, and how people judge your state of mind and your character.

Scientists have developed fascinating computer tools that allow them to determine the influence of voice alone, devoid of content. In one method they electronically scramble just enough syllables that the words cannot be deciphered. In another, they excise just the highest frequencies, which wreaks havoc with our ability to accurately identify consonants. Either way, the meaning is unintelligible while the feel of speech remains. Studies show that when people listen to such “content-free” speech, they still perceive the same impressions of the speaker and the same emotional content as do subjects who hear the unaltered speech.¹³ Why? Because as we are decoding the meaning of the utterances we call language, our minds are, in parallel, analyzing, judging, and being affected by qualities of voice that have nothing to do with words.

In one experiment scientists created recordings of a couple dozen speakers answering the same two questions, one political, one personal: “What is your opinion of college admissions designed to favor minority groups?” and “What would you do if you suddenly won or inherited a great sum of money?”¹⁴ Then they created four additional versions of each answer by electronically raising and lowering the speakers’ pitch by 20 percent, and by quickening and slowing their speech rate by 30 percent. The resulting speech still sounded natural, and its acoustic properties remained within the normal range. But would the alterations affect listeners’ perceptions?

The researchers recruited dozens of volunteers to judge the speech samples. The judges each heard and rated just one version of each speaker’s voice, randomly chosen from among the original and the altered recordings. Since the content of the speakers’ answers didn’t vary among the different versions but the vocal qualities did, differences in the listeners’ assessments would be due to the influence of those vocal qualities and not the content of the speech. The result: speakers with higher-pitched voices were judged to be less truthful, less emphatic, less potent, and more nervous than speakers with lower-pitched voices. Also, slower-talking speakers were judged to be less truthful, less persuasive, and more passive than people who spoke more quickly. “Fast-talking” may be a cliche description of a sleazy salesman, but chances are, a little speedup will make you sound smarter and more convincing. And if two speakers utter exactly the same words but one speaks a little faster and louder and with fewer pauses and greater variation in volume, that speaker will be judged to be more energetic, knowledgeable, and intelligent. Expressive speech, with modulation in pitch and volume and with a minimum of noticeable pauses, boosts credibility and enhances the impression of intelligence. Other studies show that, just as people signal the basic emotions through facial expressions, we also do it through voice. For example listeners instinctively detect that when we lower the usual pitch of our voice, we are sad and that when we raise it, we are angry or fearful.¹⁵

If voice makes such a huge impression, the key question becomes, To what extent can someone consciously alter their voice? Consider the case of Margaret Hilda Roberts, who in 1959 was elected as a Conservative member of British Parliament for North London. She had higher ambitions, but to those in her inner circle, her voice was an issue.¹⁶ “She had a schoolmarmish, very slightly bossy, slightly hectoring voice,” recalled Tim Bell, the mastermind of her party’s publicity campaigns. Her own publicity adviser, Gordon Reese, was more graphic. Her high notes, he said, were “dangerous to passing sparrows.” Proving that though her politics were fixed, her voice was pliable, Margaret Hilda Roberts took her confidants’ advice, lowered the pitch, and increased her social dominance. There is no way to measure exactly how much difference the change made, but she did pretty well for herself. After the Conservatives were defeated in 1974, Margaret Thatcher—she had married the wealthy businessman Denis Thatcher in 1951—became the party’s leader and, eventually, prime minister.

WHEN I WAS in high school, the few times I gathered the courage to approach a girl, the experience felt like I was administering a multiple-choice test and she kept answering, “None of the above.” I had more or less resigned myself to the fact that a boy who spent his free time reading books on non-Euclidean geometry was not likely to be voted “big man on campus.” Then one day when I was in the library looking for a math book, I took a wrong turn and stumbled upon a work whose title went something like How to Get a Date. I hadn’t realized people wrote instructional books on subjects like that. Questions raced through my mind: Didn’t the mere fact that I was interested in such a book mean it would never fulfill the promise of its title? Could a boy who’d rather talk about curved space- time than touchdown passes ever score himself? Was there really a bag of tricks?

The book emphasized that if a girl doesn’t know you very well—and that applied to every girl in my high school—you should not expect her to agree to a date, and you shouldn’t take the rejection personally. Instead, you should ignore the possibly enormous number of girls who turn you down and keep asking, because, even if the odds are low, the laws of mathematics say eventually your number will come up. Since mathematical laws are my kinds of laws, and I’ve always believed that persistence is a good life philosophy, I took the advice. I can’t say the results were statistically significant, but decades later, I was shocked to find that a group of French researchers essentially repeated the exercise the book had suggested. And they did it in a controlled scientific manner, achieving results that were statistically significant. Furthermore, to my surprise, they revealed a way I could have improved my chance of success.¹⁷

French culture is known for many great attributes, some of which probably have nothing to do with food, wine, and romance. But regarding the latter, the French are thought to especially excel, and in the experiment in question, they literally made a science of it. The scene was a particularly sunny June day in a pedestrian zone in the city of Vannes, a medium-sized town on the Atlantic coast of Brittany, in the west of France. Over the course of that day, three young and handsome French men randomly approached 240 young women they spotted walking alone and propositioned each and every one of them. To each, they would utter exactly the same words: “Hello. My name’s Antoine. I just want to say that I think you’re really pretty. I have to go to work this afternoon but I wonder if you would give me your phone number. I’ll phone you later and we can have a drink together someplace.” If the woman refused, they’d say, “Too bad. It’s not my day. Have a nice afternoon.” And then they’d look for another