Sexy Voice Key To Large Sex Life

Gordon G. Gallup, Jr., Susan M. Hughes and Franco Dispenza have found that people with sexy voices get more sex and have more symmetrical body shapes.

In "Ratings of voice attractiveness predict sexual behavior and body configuration," published in the September issue of Evolution and Human Behavior, published by Elsevier, Susan Hughes, Franco Dispenza, and Gordon Gallup of the University's department of psychology tested 149 men and women by having them listen to recorded, neutral voices counting from 1 to 10. They were then asked to rate the anonymous voices on a scale from "very unattractive" to "very attractive." The results were compared to surveys and morphological measurements taken among the speakers. Researchers discovered that people whose voices are judged to be attractive tend to have sexual intercourse at an earlier age, have more sexual partners than those with voices rated less attractive, and are more prone to sexual infidelity. They also have more sex partners among people involved in other relationships. "In short," Gallup said, "ratings of voice attractiveness are correlated with promiscuity in both men and women."

The fact that people with more symmetrical bodies have sexier voices is especially interesting. This suggests that the quality of development of a fetus translates into not just a more attractive symmetrical appearance but also into a throat shape that creates more pleasing vocal sounds.

The full paper is on-line.(PDF format)

We investigated the relationship between ratings of voice attractiveness and sexually dimorphic differences in shoulder-to-hip ratios (SHR) and waist-to-hip ratios (WHR), as well as different features of sexual behavior. Opposite-sex voice attractiveness ratings were positively correlated with SHR in males and negatively correlated with WHR in females. For both sexes, ratings of opposite-sex voice attractiveness also predicted reported age of first sexual intercourse, number of sexual partners, number of extra-pair copulation (EPC) partners, and number of partners that they had intercourse with that were involved in another relationship (i.e., were themselves chosen as an EPC partner). Coupled with previous findings showing a relationship between voice attractiveness and bilateral symmetry, these results provide additional evidence that the sound of a persons voice may serve as an important multidimensional fitness indicator.

A sexy voice might be more important for a female than a male. Males might be better off with bigger shoulders.

It is interesting that voice attractiveness was a better predictor of sexual behavior in females than WHR was. The best predictor of promiscuity (as measured by number of sexual partners) in males was SHR, whereas in females, it was voice attractiveness. As shown in Table 2, the correlations between opposite-sex ratings of voice attractiveness and sexual behavior in females were consistently higher than those found for WHR and sexual behavior. However, just the opposite was true for males (see Table 1). Among males, SHR was a better predictor of sexual behavior than voice was. For example, whereas opposite-sex voice attractiveness accounted for 13% of the variance in promiscuity among males, SHR accounted for 28% of the variance in male promiscuity. The same sex differences held for the relationship between voice and body configuration. Male SHR accounted for more variance (25%) in opposite sex ratings of voice attractiveness than did female WHR (14%).

Perhaps people with unsexy voices should avoid talking much in bars.