Vocal Preferences in Humans: A Systematic Review
Surprisingly, the study of human voice evolution has long been conducted without any reference to its biological function. Yet, following Darwin’s original concept, John Ohala was the first linguist to assume the functional role of sexual selection to exp
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Vocal Preferences in Humans: A Systematic Review Melissa Barkat-Defradas, Michel Raymond, and Alexandre Suire
Abstract Surprisingly, the study of human voice evolution has long been conducted without any reference to its biological function. Yet, following Darwin’s original concept, John Ohala was the first linguist to assume the functional role of sexual selection to explain vocal dimorphism in humans. Nevertheless, it is only at the very beginning of the millennial that the study of voice attractiveness developed, revealing that beyond its linguistic role, voice also conveys important psycho-socio-biological information that have a significant effect on the speaker’s mating and reproductive success. In this review article, our aim is to synthesize 20 years of research dedicated to the study of vocal preferences and to present the evolutionary benefits associated with such preferences. Keywords Vocal preferences · Perception · Language evolution · Sexual selection · Evolutionary biology · Acoustics · Voice · Fundamental frequency · Formant dispersion · Voice attractiveness
4.1 Introduction Darwin thought of mate choice as a purely aesthetic experience, a selection of beauty for its own sake (Darwin, 1871). However, his view has not been embraced by modern evolutionary biology, for which mate choice results from human adaptive preferences, a mechanism that has evolved because of dimorphic physical features or sexual ornaments (such as the female waist-to-hip ratio, the male shoulder-toM. Barkat-Defradas (B) · M. Raymond · A. Suire Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, University of Montpellier, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut pour la Recherche et le Développement, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes – Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier, France e-mail: [email protected] M. Raymond e-mail: [email protected] A. Suire e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 B. Weiss et al. (eds.), Voice Attractiveness, Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6627-1_4
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hip ratio, facial traits, breast size, voice, and so on) that are assumed to be reliable indicators of mate quality (Arak & Enquist, 1993). Indeed, the mere sound of a person’s voice contains important, embedded biological information. Consequently, a large amount of research has been dedicated to identifying men’s preferences for women’s secondary sexual characteristics and vice versa, as well as the evolutionary benefits associated with such preferences. Preferences partly proceed from an unconscious mechanism: an individual may be aware of the factors that have led him to choose one sexual partner instead of another, but it does not necessarily mean s/he is conscious of the link existing between his or her preference and the property conveyed by the cue itself. A good example to illustrate this statement rests on women’s preference for masculine low-pitched voices. Though female subject
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