Candidate's voice pitch sways voters: study

People with lower-pitched voices are more likely to win elected office as they are believed to be superior leaders with greater physical prowess and integrity, a study claims.

Voice pitch, the perceived "highness" or "lowness" of a voice, influences how people are judged on a variety of dimensions such as attractiveness, physical strength and social dominance.

To determine if there is a correlation between voice pitch and leadership ability, researchers from Florida Atlantic University and University of Miami in the US correlated a measure of the voice pitch of some members of a political party with a measure of their leadership ability to test whether members with lower-pitched voices are more effective leaders.

The researchers predicted that if voice pitch contains information about leadership ability, then individuals with lower-pitched voices would show evidence of being more effective elected officials.

They then asked participants to respond to persuasive political policy statements delivered with different pitched voices.

The researchers wanted to test the prediction that if individuals with lower-pitched voices are better leaders, then they also should be more persuasive when making policy appeals.

The results, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, revealed that while voters prefer to vote for candidates with lower sounding voices, elected officials with lower voices are not necessarily better leaders.

The people with lower voices are not more effective legislators, and speakers with lower voices are not more persuasive when making statements about governmental policies.