Tuesday, December 9, 2014

The Daily Stat from Harvard Business Review

  The Daily Stat - Harvard Business Review

December 8, 2014



Female Listeners Are Interested in Creaky-Voiced Men but Not Creaky-Voiced Women


Female research participants showed a great deal of interest in an audio advertisement for an internet service if it was read by a creaky-voiced man, but very little interest if it was read by a creaky-voiced woman (5.04 versus 3.38 on a 0-to-6 scale), say Hillary J.D. Wiener and Tanya L. Chartrand of Duke University. Of six voice types studied, including breathy, nasal, tense, whispery, and harsh, such an effect arose only for women and only for "creaky," which the researchers define as having frequent low-pitched vibrations, especially at the ends of words or phrases. It's unclear why the women responded well to male creakiness, but lack of interest in creaky female voices may arise from cultural cues such as actresses' use of creaky voices when playing nonserious roles, as Reese Witherspoon does in Legally Blonde, the researchers say.





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