If You Want More Babies, Find A Man With A Deep Voice

[abdulhakeem]

McMaster University (http://www.mcmaster.ca/)September 25, 2007

Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/) — Men who have lower-pitched voices have more children than do men with high-pitched voices, researchers have found. And their study suggests that for reproductive-minded women, mate selection favours men with low-pitched voices.

The study, published in Biology Letters, offers insight into the evolution of the human voice as well as how we choose our mates.

In previous studies, David Feinberg, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University, and his colleagues have shown that women find deeper male voices to be more attractive, judging them to be more dominant, older, healthier and more masculine sounding. Men, on the other hand, find higher-pitch voices in women more attractive, subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger sounding.

"While we find in this new study that voice pitch is not related to offspring mortality rates," says Feinberg," we find that men with low voice pitch have higher reproductive success and more children born to them."

Feinberg and his colleague Coren Apicella chose their subjects for this study from the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the last true hunter-gatherer cultures. Because the Hadza have no modern birth control, the researchers were able to determine that men who have lower pitched voices have more children than men with higher pitched voices.

"If our ancestors went through a similar process", says Feinberg, "this could be one reason why men's and women's voices sound different."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by McMaster University.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070924122805.htm

[abdulhakeem]

Men with deep voices have more kids than high-pitched counterparts: Tanzania study

September 25, 2007

TORONTO - Men, how low can you go?

Your voice, that is. As you hear yourself answer the question aloud, does the response come out Pee Wee Herman-squeaky or Barry White baritone smooth?

Studies suggest the pitch level of a man's voice could have an impact on his appeal to the opposite sex, with new research indicating women wanting to have children may favour a mate with more huskiness in his speech.

In previous studies conducted by a team of researchers, including McMaster University professor David Feinberg, women were shown to find men with deeper voices to be more attractive, deeming them more dominant, older, healthier and more masculine-sounding.

This was determined after subjects heard voices in which the pitch had been manipulated and had to rate them on a scale of what was judged as most and least attractive.

On the flipside, men judged women with higher-pitched voices to be more attractive, subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger-sounding.

Yet a more recent study found men with lower voices had greater reproductive success and more children born to them, Feinberg said.

Feinberg and his colleague, Coren Apicella, an anthropology graduate student at Harvard University, selected members of the Hadza of Tanzania as subjects for the new study, to be published in Biology Letters on Wednesday. The tribe is among the last remaining hunter-gatherer cultures and has no modern birth control. The men were asked how many children they had had, both living and deceased.

Apicella and Feinberg later listened to the recordings run through a computer algorithm to detect voice pitch, measuring the results against another set of numbers tracking reproductive success for the entire group.

"What we noticed was that men with lower-pitched voices tended to have more babies than men with higher-pitched voices did, and we thought, 'OK, is this because men with higher-pitched voices, their babies aren't really surviving, or is it because men with lower-pitched voices are having more babies?"' said Feinberg, an assistant professor in psychology, neuroscience and behaviour at McMaster in Hamilton.

It's more likely men with lower-pitched voices can find more women than their high-pitched counterparts, rather than the possibility that men with higher-pitched voices are having their children die at younger ages, the findings suggest.

Pitch level is measured in hertz (Hz), a measurement of fundamental frequency of the voice, how many cycles per second the sound wave has in it, Feinberg said. While decibels are measured relative to a reference noise, hertz is an absolute scale, like Celsius, he added.

Feinberg said the average man's voice is at 120 Hz, and ranges from 90-160, while women's voices are a full octave higher, ranging from 180-280 Hz. Babies are generally in the 300-500 Hz range.

The findings don't imply that voice pitch is a determining factor in how many children you'll have, Feinberg said.

"We just correlate the number of children you have with the voice pitch," he said. "We won't know, say, 100 Hz means five babies, 160 Hz means one baby."

"It's not that there's a sort of absolute number that predicts an absolute voice frequency that predicts how many children you're going to have. It's more likely that within a certain range, men with lower-pitched voices on average are going to have more babies than men with higher-pitched voices will."

Feinberg said if ancestors went through a similar process, it could count as one reason for the differences in men's and women's voices.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gL2334iFEGZbs4nKDuaiSzDAhFtw

[Arrakis]

That would be because men with high pitched voices are usually Eunuchs lol

[thurber]

How SEXY is your voice? - Voice Coaching

One uses it and becomes a politician; another misuses it and can’t order a pizza over the telephone properly.

But as for most human tools, your voice is also OPEN to improvement and development.

Most people think that it is just the vocals that produce the sound. Others believe that the more hard you push the air out of your lungs, the better your voice sounds.

Well, no.

Your voice is produced by a combination of organs. Your lungs and your diaphragm push the air, which meets the vocal chords, and they all together start a series of vibrations.

These vibrations expand through your lungs and mouth cavity. The key word here is resonance. They way you move your mouth, the way you expand your throat and more important, how deeply you breath, is what makes the resonance sound high or low.

With the same air speed, you can resonate high, or you can resonate low.

You might want to try an experiment. Say “yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh” long enough. Now try bringing your voice down from the higher pitch to the lowest tone you can. Keep your air speed steady. You will be able to notice that your voice will resonate in three different places as you go from high up the frequency scale to deep down low. First you will resonate at the nose, then you will resonate at your throat, and last and more important you will resonate down at your chest. There is where the bass lies.

Pavarotti, the tenore, sings well because of his much trained diaphragm.

By doing some vocal training, you may learn to move your resonant point further down your body. That is a good thing. People will pay attention to you more often because of that.

There was a test once, and it was found that people that have a deep bass voice, people that know how to make plenty of pauses, and people that take their time when they speak, are way more attractive than all the rest.

Notice also that what you do here, is that you control a whole series of organs to bring out an end result: Keep the point of you resonance down to your chest and away from your head.

This is done, by trying to breathe deeply from your diaphragm and not shallow from your upper lungs.

You see, all babies and animals breath using the diaphragm. As we stress and move on in life, we make the error and start breathing shallower. There is a misunderstanding in western society. For some bizarre reason, the image of a fit man is one with a strong chest. So, many people when asked to take a deep breath, they start by expanding the upper part of the lungs. My friend, if you want to have a big chest, go to the gym. Breathing high, will not only make you less calm, but will also make you seem more defensive.

Normally, a high pitched voice reminds us of being less calm. Remember the first time you spoke in public, or the last time you were defending your self about something. Your voice was a pitch higher than normal.

If you want to stay calm: keep your breathing deep and your voice as bass as it can go. This will stop any unwanted positive stress feedback phenomena.

Exercises.

In order to be de-programmed of this bad way of breathing, you will need up to several months. But it can be done. There are some exercises that do exactly that. You should not to overdo with them and should perform them only after you have talked to a doctor or a voice expert.

Strengthen your diaphragm awareness exercises.

1) Inhale from your diaphragm. Push your stomach up like a balloon. Count silently 1-2-3-4 while inhaling. Count 4-3-2-1 silently while exhaling. This should not be done more than 6 times per day.

2) Inhale from the diaphragm deeply. Exhale slowly. So slowly that, if there was a candle in front of you, you wouldn’t blow it.

3) Keep a strong body language so that you feel better.

Resonance

1) Inhale deeply again. Exhale slowly while resonating from you chest. You should feel the resonance down to your belly. Avoid the nose or the throat. Your exhale should be stable with no tone changes and with no added effort.

2) Perform the same, but this time start visualising that the resonance point looks like an elevator going up and down, as it travels from your nose to your chest.

3) Perform the same, but this time say all the different vocals in the alphabet, until all of them sound with the same tone. You may spot some that are less bass than others. Work them.

Speech rhythm

4) Try and find something to read. Read it out loud, while you are able to read at about 160 words per minute.

5) Give feelings to your words. Hit at least two tones. A monotone is *not* an EXCITING voice, to listen to.

http://happybrainstorm.com/voice-and-speech-development/