Men and women change their voices when they speak to lovers versus friends and such variations could be used to detect infidelity, a new study has claimed.
New research by Albright College associate professor of psychology Susan Hughes, Ph.D., said that it's not just that we change the sound of our voice, but that others can easily perceive those changes.
The study is co-authored by Jack LaFayette, director of institutional research at Albright, and Sally D. Farley, former assistant professor of psychology at Albright, who now teaches at the University of Baltimore.
The study looked at how individuals alter their voices, or engage in voice modulation, when speaking to romantic partners versus same-sex friends during brief telephone conversations.
Researchers recruited 24 callers who were newly in love and still in the so-called honeymoon period. Callers were asked to phone their romantic partners, as well as a close same-sex friend, and in both cases engage in a conversation asking specifically "how are you?" and "what are you doing?"
Researchers then played the recordings to 80 independent raters who judged the samples for sexiness, pleasantness and degree of romantic interest. Raters were exposed to only one end of the conversation and, in some cases, for only 2 seconds.
Still, raters were able to correctly identify, with greater than chance accuracy, whether the caller was speaking to a friend or lover, leading researchers to believe that people will alter their voice to communicate their relationship status.
The study has been published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior.
