High-pitched women most attracted to men with deep voices

Washington, May 8 (ANI): Women with high-pitched voices are most attracted to deep-voiced, manly men, according to a new study.

"People obviously prefer to marry and date people they consider attractive, but also are more likely to cooperate with attractive individuals, prefer to hire attractive people and even prefer to vote for those they think are attractive," said psychologist Benedict Jones at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

"So, by understanding the factors that influence attractiveness judgments, we're really getting insights into something that's one of the most powerful driving forces behind social interactions," the expert added.

Earlier research has shown that deep-voiced men have more kids, implying that maybe soprano-voiced women preferred macho, deep-voiced men as well, in essence, pairing up the most feminine with the most masculine, reports LiveScience.

"Over the years, many philosophers have suggested that it's impossible to understand beauty and attraction, largely because beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder," Jones said. "Our recent work shows that, although it's certainly true that people often differ in the types of people that they find most attractive, these idiosyncratic tastes can, to some extent, be understood and even predicted."

To come up with the finding, Jones and his team measured the pitch of the voices of 113 college women.

Next, the women heard recordings of men saying "I really like you" or "I really don't like you." The women were questioned on how attractive they found the men, whose voices had been electronically modified to either be higher-pitched (more feminine) or lower-pitched (more masculine).

The female participants liked the lower-pitched voices - no matter what the guys had to say, the scientists found. The 20 students who had the most high-pitched voices liked the deep male voices nearly one fifth more than the 20 women who possessed the lowest-pitched voices.

"The findings suggest that women's own attractiveness in some way influences their preferences for masculine traits in men's voices," Jones said. "Effects like those in our study might simply reflect people finding their place in the mating market and taking that into account when judging others' attractiveness."

The findings have been published online in the journal Behavioral Ecology. (ANI)