Study finds that womens voices are lower now than they used to be

Study finds that womens voices are lower now than they used to beStudy finds that womens voices are lower now than they used to beIn the underrated film I Feel Pretty that came out this spring, Academy-award nominee Michelle Williams showed she has got comedic chops too when she played the role of a glamorous CEO of a beauty empire called LeClaire Cosmetics. Williams looks every bit the part as she is beautiful, fashionable, graceful and appealingly aloof but then she opens her mouth. Williams gave her character, Avery LeClaire, the voice of one that resembles a chipmunk and it was brilliant.Over the course of the film we start to see Avery unravel as she is put under major pressure by her grandmother (played by notoriously low-voiced Lauren Hutton) who started the company and in one stress-eating scene she confesses to Amy Schumers character, who has become her Jiminy Cricket in some ways, that she has tried everything (well really just voice lessons) to fix her high-pitched voice b ecause she knows it underwrites her commanding presence.Women speak at lower pitches todayThe problem seems to be that Avery was born in the wrong era. New research shows that womens voices today are significantly deeper than previous generations and that is because of roles shifting and power dynamics.Cecilia Pemberton at the University of South Australiastudied the voices of two groups of Australian womenbetween the ages of 1825 years old. They compared recordings of women speaking in 1945 with ones of women talking in the 1990s. It was found that the fundamental frequency had dropped by 23 Hz over those 50 years. The average womans voice they looked at went from 229 Hz to 206 Hz.This isnt surprising as a lower voice is unequivocally considered more dominating. Chimpanzees and frogs know this and do this and so do humans it seems. You can have the right body language, clothing and be as smart as a whip but if your voice resembles that of a muppet, people will automatically undercu t you. Perhaps womens voices are evolving this way as a survival of the fittest type of strategy.I Feel Pretty screenwriterMarc Silverstein said of Williams character, The voice was written and the part is done as written, but the voice was hers, Silverstein said. It was just written super high with a vocal fry, and kind of based on someone that she knows and I know. Just someone we know thats really successful and smart, but when they get up to talk, youre like, Whoa. Where did that come from? This is why we saw Margaret Thatcher take lessons to lower the pitch of her voice and she went on to win her election and become Prime Minister.Chris Delaney,a career coach and the author ofThe 73 Rules for Influencingthe Interview usingPsychology, NLP and Hypnotic Persuasion Techniques said in an interview, We have all heard that people form an opinionabout you in the first 5-10 minutes of meeting you, this is true but thetime frame is closer to 5-10 seconds.When using a baby voice or even w hen you have a baby face, people will feelan instinct to mother you, to protect you.This can be an advantage anddisadvantage. An advantage can be that you are protected after making acostly mistake at work, the natural instinct to protect and nurture a babyis projected on to your colleagues who will do anything to keep you safe. But what when you are ready for that promotion? Your colleagues andmanagers already have a prejudice about you they have stereotyped you as some who needs erleichterung from others. With this reputation, you will find ithard to succeed in any promotional interview.The Catch-22Interestingly it has also been found that voice pitches for women vary between countries. Women in the Netherlands tend to have deeper voices than those in Japan signifying how power is valued in certain countries versus others.However, before you go trying to speak lower, researcherJoey Cheng of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told The BBC, While lower voices and other assertive behavior in general effectively signal and assert power and authority in women, as it does in men, it might also have the unintended effect of undermining how well liked they are. Ay theres the rub.