Acoustic analysis and playback studies have greatly advanced our understanding of between-individual differences in nonverbal communication. Yet, researchers have only recently begun to investigate within-individual variation in the voice, particularly how people modulate key vocal parameters across various social contexts, with most of this research focusing on mating contexts. Here, we investigated whether men and women modulate the frequency components of their voices in a professional context, and how this voice modulation affects listeners’ assessments of the speakers’ competence and authority. Research assistants engaged scientists working as faculty members at various universities in two types of speech conditions: (1) Control speech, wherein the subjects were asked how to get to the administrative offices on that given campus; and (2) Authority speech, wherein the same subjects were asked to provide commentary for a radio program for young scholars titled, “How to become a scientist, and is it worth it?”. Our results show that male (n = 27) and female (n = 24) faculty members lowered their mean voice pitch (measured as fundamental frequency, F₀) and vocal tract resonances (measured as formant position, P_f) when asked to provide their expert opinion compared to when giving directions. Notably, women lowered their mean voice pitch more than did men (by 33 Hz vs. 14 Hz) when giving expert advice. The results of a playback experiment further indicated that foreign-speaking listeners judged the voices of faculty members as relatively more competent and more authoritative based on authority speech than control speech, indicating that the observed nonverbal voice modulation effectively altered listeners’ perceptions. Our results support the prediction that people modulate their voices in social contexts in ways that are likely to elicit favorable social appraisals.

中文翻译：

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权威声音：专业人士在提供专家建议时降低人声频率

声学分析和播放研究极大地提高了我们对非语言交流中个体差异的理解。然而，研究人员直到最近才开始研究语音中的个体内部差异，特别是人们如何在各种社会环境中调节关键的语音参数，而这项研究大部分集中在交配环境上。在这里，我们调查了男性和女性是否在专业环境中调节了声音的频率成分，以及这种声音调制如何影响听众对说话者能力和权威的评估。研究助理在两种语言条件下聘请了在各大学担任教职人员的科学家：（1）控制性语音，其中被试被问到如何到达指定校园的行政办公室；（2）权威演讲，其中相同的主题被要求为青年学者的广播节目提供评论，标题为“如何成为科学家，这值得吗？”。我们的结果表明，男性（n  = 27）和女 教师（n = 24）降低了平均音调（以基频F ₀衡量）和声道共振（以共振峰位置P _f衡量））与提供指导时相比，被要求提供专家意见时。值得注意的是，在提供专家建议时，女性比男性降低了平均语音音调（分别降低了33 Hz和14 Hz）。回放实验的结果进一步表明，基于听众的演讲，外语听众根据教职人员的语音判断其教职员工的声音相对于控制语音而言相对更有能力且更具权威性，这表明观察到的非言语语音调制有效地改变了听众的感知。我们的结果支持以下预测：人们在社交环境中以可能引起良好社会评价的方式来调节自己的声音。