Objective

The evolutionary-contingency hypothesis, which suggests that preferences for leaders are context-dependent, has found relatively consistent support from research investigating leadership decisions based on facial pictures. Here, we test whether these results transfer to leadership decisions based on voice recordings. We examined how dominance and trustworthiness perceptions relate to leadership decisions in wartime and peacetime contexts and whether effects differ by a speaker’s gender. Further, we investigate two cues that might be related to leadership decisions, as well as dominance and trustworthiness perceptions: voice pitch and strength of regional accent.

Methods

We conducted a preregistered online study with 125 raters and recordings of 120 speakers (61 men, 59 women) from different parts in Germany. Raters were randomly distributed into four rating conditions: dominance, trustworthiness, hypothetical vote (wartime) and hypothetical vote (peacetime).

Results

We find that dominant speakers were more likely to be voted for in a wartime context while trustworthy speakers were more likely to be voted for in a peacetime context. Voice pitch functions as a main cue for dominance perceptions, while strength of regional accent functions as a main cue for trustworthiness perceptions.

Conclusions

This study adds to a stream of research that suggests that (a) people’s voices contain important information based on which we form social impressions and (b) we prefer different types of leaders across different contexts. Future research should disentangle effects of gender bias in leadership decisions and investigate underlying mechanisms that influence how people’s voices contribute to achieving social status.

中文翻译：

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声音优势和可信度对领导决策的性别和特定环境影响

客观的

进化偶然性假设表明，对领导者的偏好取决于环境，该假设已从基于面部图片的领导决策研究中找到了相对一致的支持。在这里，我们测试这些结果是否会转移到基于录音的领导决策。我们研究了在战时和和平时期的主导地位和可信度感知与领导决策的关系，以及影响是否因说话者的性别而异。此外，我们调查了可能与领导决策以及支配地位和可信度感知相关的两个线索：音高和地区口音的强度。

方法

我们对来自德国不同地区的 125 名评估者和 120 名演讲者（61 名男性，59 名女性）进行了预先注册的在线研究。评分者被随机分配到四个评分条件中：支配地位、可信度、假设投票（战时）和假设投票（和平时期）。

结果

我们发现，在战时背景下，占主导地位的演讲者更有可能被投票，而在和平时期，值得信赖的演讲者更有可能被投票。音高作为主导感知的主要线索，而区域口音的强度作为可信度感知的主要线索。

结论

这项研究增加了一系列研究，表明（a）人们的声音包含重要信息，我们以此为基础形成社会印象，以及（b）我们在不同的背景下更喜欢不同类型的领导者。未来的研究应该解开性别偏见对领导决策的影响，并调查影响人们的声音如何有助于实现社会地位的潜在机制。