The new research suggests that people in high-rank positions tend to speak louder and with less variability in pitch.
The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
The researchers note that when we want to be perceived as powerful to others, we tend to focus on our words.
But their study reveals that the acoustic properties of our voices are integral in how dominant or subordinate we come across to others.
The inspiration for their study was Margaret Thatcher's vocal coaching. It was quite well known that Thatcher had gone through extensive voice coaching to exude a more authoritative, powerful personal.
The researchers wanted to explore how something so fundamental as power might elicit changes in the way a voice sounds, and how these situational vocal changes impact the way listeners perceive and behave toward the speakers.
To further investigate, the team explored how hierarchical rank influences acoustic properties of a speaker's voice and how these cues affect how an individual perceives a speaker's rank.
Commenting on their research, the research team leader says:
"Our findings suggest that whether it's parents attempting to assert authority over unruly children, haggling between a car salesman and customer, or negotiations between heads of states, the sound of the voices involved may profoundly determine the outcome of those interactions."
Louder voices associated with higher power
In their first experiment, Ko and colleagues recorded 161 college students as they read a passage out loud, in order to capture baseline acoustics. Then, the researchers randomly assigned the students to either a "high-rank" or a "low-rank group," before having them participate in a negotiation exercise.
The students in the high-rank group were instructed to imagine that they had either a strong alternative offer, valuable inside information or high status in the workplace.
Additionally, students in this group were asked to remember an experience during which they had power before any negotiations started.
Students in the low-risk group were instructed to imagine they had a weak offer, no inside information or low workplace status. They were also instructed to remember an encounter during which they lacked power.
Next, the researchers recorded all of the students as they read another passage out loud as if they were beginning negotiations with their imaginary adversary.
Results showed that the voices of students in the high-rank group tended to go up in pitch, become more monotone and become more variable in loudness than the students in the low-rank group, compared with the first baseline recordings.
In a second experiment - conducted with a different group of college students - the researchers found that listeners who had no knowledge of the first experiment picked up on vocal cues denoting power differences between the low- and high-rank groups.
When the new listeners ranked speakers from the first experiment, they accurately categorized them as either low or high rank.
Additionally, the new listeners associated higher pitch voices that varied in loudness with high-power behaviors, while also connecting louder voices with higher power.
"hese findings suggest that listeners are quite perceptive to these subtle variations in vocal cues and they use these cues to decide who is in charge.
Amazingly, in the first experiment, power affected the participants' voices in almost the exact same way that Thatcher's voice changed after her vocal training.
References:
1. The sound of power: conveying and detecting hierarchical rank through voice, Sei Jin Ko, et al., Psychological Science, doi: 10.1177/0956797614553009, published 20 November 2014, abstract.
2. Association for Psychological Science news release, accessed 24 November 2014 via Eurekalert.
No comments:
Post a Comment