Formant dispersion describes whether our usual frequencies are spaced closely together (a shrill or monotone voice) or far apart (an NPR host). She and other researchers have looked at what's called "formant dispersion." Our voices each have a variety of "formants" - different frequencies that we regularly hit while we speak. But, she says, men have trouble pinpointing exactly what makes them swoon. Men tend to agree strongly about which voices are attractive, says psychologist Susan Hughes of Albright College. Men might find a super-breathy voice sexy because it accentuates this naturally female trait, Feinberg says. The gap is larger in women, giving them a breathier voice. Breathiness comes from air whistling through a gap at the back of the vocal cords. But Harvard psychologist David Feinberg says that while we might think of Turner's voice as deep, what actually characterizes it is breathiness. In fact, when many people think of a sexy female voice, they don't think high - they think deep and sultry, like the voice of Kathleen Turner as Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And there's probably such a thing as too high - a voice that veers from sweet into shrill is just plain annoying. Some research shows that men prefer high-pitched female voices, but there haven't been many experiments so far. And women (as we learn in the radio story above) tend to say the deeper, the better.īut it's harder to determine what makes a woman's voice appealing to men. Men, on average, speak almost an octave lower than women. The most obvious difference between male and female voices is pitch - what we perceive as a high or deep voice. Whether sultry, sweet, shrill or gravelly, a voice conjures up an image of who's talking. "Voice is a profound difference between men and women, and it colors every human interaction we have," says David Puts, an anthropologist at Michigan State University. It turns out the person's voice is key to that first impression. When we meet someone new, we're quick to judge: Friend or foe? Bland or bubbly? Hot or not? Jessica Rabbit knows what makes her bad: "I was drawn that way." But what makes her voice so sexy?
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