Introduction
The human voice is one of the main sources providing first impressions of a speaker’s identity, including biological sex. The perceived biological sex of an adult speaker from their voice is primarily defined by mean fundamental frequency (F0, perceived as voice pitch) and, to a lesser extent, from vocal tract resonances (or formants), which in men are on average 50% and 20% lower, respectively, than women’s (Titze
1989; Gelfer and Mikos
2005). In addition to signaling sex, these voice patterns (e.g., relatively lower pitch and resonance in men's voices and relatively higher pitch and resonance in women’s voices) influence listeners’ attributions of gender, that is the “roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that any society considers appropriate for girls and boys, and women and men” (World Health Organisation
2020). For example, listeners judge men and women with low-frequency voices as physically bigger, stronger, more masculine, more physically and socially dominant than those with voices of relatively high-frequency voices (for reviews: Hall et al.
2005; Pisanski and Bryant
2019). These associations can be partly explained in evolutionary terms, as voice pitch, at least in males, is inversely related to testosterone (Cartei et al.
2020b; O'Connor et al.
2011), which in turn is positively associated with a host of physiological masculine characteristics, including physical strength and body size (Bhasin et al.
1996), as well as self-reported dominance (Puts et al.
2006). At the same time, listeners have a tendency to overgeneralize the sex dimorphism that characterizes the voice of adult speakers, resulting in sex-stereotype biases in judgement patterns. For instance, the perceived association between pitch and body size may lead to misattributions of physical strength in adults (Feinberg et al.
2005; Sell et al.
2010), and of sex in babies (e.g., low-pitched cries are more likely to be attributed to boys and high-pitched cries to girls, despite the absence of sex differences in the pitch of babies: Reby et al.
2016).
Although most of extant research focuses on the impact of vocal masculinity and femininity on listeners’ perceptions of speakers within intrasexual competition or mate choice contexts, a few studies have helped uncover the wider socio-economic implications of speaker attributions. Like masculine-looking men and women (Little
2014; Re and Rule
2017; Rule and Ambady
2009; Sczesny et al.
2006; Todorov et al.
2005), speakers with masculine (e.g., lower-pitched) voices are often considered to have positive personality attributes including competence and leadership abilities. For instance, when asked to select political leaders, both men and women tend to select male and female leaders with more masculine (lower-pitched) voices and rate them as more competent than their higher-pitched counterparts (Klofstad et al.
2012,
2015). In addition, Tigue et al. (
2012) showed that voices from political candidates with artificially lowered pitch were associated with perceptions of ability and skill more often than were their higher-pitched versions, independent of whether the content spoken was political or neutral. Similarly, research on the impact of voice pitch within the business context found that artificially lower-pitched voices of job candidates are associated with greater competence, regardless of applicant gender or résumé information (depicting either a stereotypically masculine or a stereotypically feminine applicant—Ko et al.
2009). Moreover, a lowered voice pitch from organizational spokespersons results in greater perceptions of competence and ability to restore organizational reputation compared to a raised voice pitch, particularly in times of crisis (Claeys and Cauberghe
2014).
While this research demonstrates that sex-related voice variation is sufficient to trigger stereotyping in adult listeners, an important theoretical question concerns whether auditory-based stereotyping of adults is already present in childhood, paralleling evidence on children’s gender stereotyped judgments of adults based on body shape and facial appearance (Montepare and Zebrowitz-McArthur
1989; Pine
2001). Our study aims to bridge this gap by directly examining how voice variation in masculinity and femininity impacts children’s occupational stereotyping of adults. An investigation of this nature will provide valuable insights into the role of vocal cues in the early origins of stereotyping, paving the way for developmental investigations of stereotyping from multiple angles. Moreover, given that children’s prior expectancies of other people bias their interactions with them (Harris et al.
1992; Gurland and Grolnick
2003), voice-based judgments may also have an impact on how children would engage with adults, with practical implications for understanding and improving such interactions.
Our study focuses on occupational competence, given that perceived competence is a key dimension (alongside warmth) underlying person and group perception (for a review: Fiske et al.
2007). Although no research to date has directly examined how the voice impacts competence judgments of children, recent evidence suggests that children may be sensitive to sex-related variation in voice frequency, and that this variation influences their assessment of speakers’ traits in gender-stereotypical ways. For instance, children are sensitive to vocal masculinity and femininity in the voices of their peers, as they match stereotypically masculine and feminine descriptors of a child character with corresponding masculinized or feminized voices (Cartei et al.
2019a). Moreover, a recent study using a voice imitation paradigm has shown that children conform to gender-stereotyped expectations by masculinizing and feminizing their voices for traditionally male and female occupations (Cartei et al.
2020a). The present work aims to extend this literature by investigating for the first time whether child listeners use variation in voice masculinity and femininity (by artificially lowering/raising voice pitch) to make gender stereotypical predictions about the occupational competence of adult speakers.
We chose to study 8- to 10-year-olds as previous research has shown that from about age 8 children’s range of stereotypes expands, and the nature of the gender associations becomes more abstract and multi-dimensional. For instance, they are able to use gender-related variation in behavior and appearance in a stereotypical manner when making predictions of peers’ future occupational career choices (Martin et al.
1990). Specifically, we hypothesize that children will assign higher competence to lower-pitched (more masculine) voices for stereotypically male occupations. Conversely, we expect that children will assign higher competence to higher-pitched (more feminine) voices for stereotypically female occupations. Finally, voices re-synthesized to a midline pitch should receive highest ratings when paired with gender-neutral occupations.
Discussion
This is the first study to show that children make gender-stereotypical judgments of adult speakers on the basis of speaker’s variation in vocal masculinity and femininity, complementing prior research that focused exclusively on adults. Specifically, in line with our predictions, we found that feminized voices received the highest ratings when paired with stereotypically female occupations, and the lowest ratings when paired with stereotypically male occupations. Also consistent with our predictions, masculinized voices received the lowest ratings when paired with stereotypically female occupations, and male (but not female) masculinized voices received the highest ratings when paired with stereotypically male occupations. Overall, our results show that variation in adults’ vocal masculinity and femininity (manipulated by artificially lowering or raising mean voice pitch) affects children’s ratings of speakers’ occupational competence in gender-stereotypical ways, though ratings for stereotypically male occupations were also influenced by speakers’ sex.
In terms of the overall pattern of results, the observed ratings are largely consistent with psychoacoustic studies with adult listeners, showing that (re-synthesized and natural) male voices with lower pitch are preferentially attributed stereotypically male characteristics, such as masculinity (Pisanski et al.
2012), physical and social dominance (Hall et al.
2005; Puts et al.
2007; Vukovic et al.
2011), authority (Sorokowski et al.
2019), and leadership (Klofstad et al.
2012; Tigue et al.
2012), though perceivers associated higher pitch more strongly with high- than with low-rank behaviors in at least one study (Ko et al.
2015). On the other hand, women with higher-pitched voices are known to be preferentially attributed stereotypically female characteristics, such as femininity (Röder et al.
2013), friendliness (Tsuji
2004; Ohara
1999), and submissiveness (Borkowska and Pawlowski
2011).
Although, as expected, our results show that feminized voices from speakers of both sexes received the highest competence ratings for stereotypically female jobs, psychoacoustic studies report that adult listeners rate lower-pitched individuals as more competent than higher-pitched individuals both from speakers’ recordings that are neutral ratings of speakers reading out loud vowels and sentences of gender-neutral content (Krahé and Papakonstantinou
2020; Oleszkiewicz et al.
2016) or politically relevant (e.g., ratings of hypothetical political candidates: Klofstad et al.
2012). However, none of these studies asked listeners to make judgments in the context of female-typed occupations, whereas our study did. Because professions that are dominated by women tend to be stereotyped as more feminine, and requiring more “female‐like” traits (e.g., warmth: Eagly and Carli
2003; friendliness: Wharton
1999; helpfulness and cooperation: Cejka and Eagly
1999), competence on these jobs is likely to be judged on these traits, and thus may drive the higher competence ratings for the higher-pitched voices observed in the present study. While the present study did not directly assess whether high-pitched voices triggered these types of inferences, in partial support of this hypothesis, Oleszkiewicz and colleagues (
2016) report that adult listeners make positive associations between high pitch and warmth in women’s voices (though not in men’s). Also, Halper and Stopeck (
2019) report that perceptions of warmth primarily drive the relationship between job candidate gender and both likeability and job hireability for female-dominated domains such as the caregiving professions.
Both speakers’ biological characteristics and listeners’ socialization processes may contribute to the observed overall pattern of results. Lower-pitched male voices positively correlate with salivary testosterone levels in childhood and adulthood (Cartei et al.
2014,
2020b), and testosterone is a primary driver of physiological masculine features, such as increased muscle size and strength (Bhasin et al.
1996), and physical fitness (Fink et al.
2006; Manning and Taylor
2001), which are valued traits in physically demanding jobs that are male-dominated (Colker
1985). As well as negatively correlating with testosterone, higher-pitched voices in men are preferred by women seeking greater perceived parental and relationship investment (Apicella and Feinberg
2009). Moreover, higher-pitched voices in women positively correlate with level of estrogen, which is positively linked to maternal behavior in numerous species, including rats, mice, sheep, and possibly non-human primates (Bridges
2015). Thus, a high voice pitch may advertise greater actual or perceived propensity for nurturing and care-taking roles, which are stereotypically seen as women’s jobs (Guy and Newman
2004). While the observed ratings may partially reflect children’s sensitivity to voice cues underlying qualities of speakers, many such attributions are nowadays irrelevant to job competence. For instance, there is considerable overlap in men’s and women’s physical strength, and many heavy manual jobs are now machine-operated, which means that many women are physically capable of doing such work (Ness
2012).
Moreover, the idea that voice pitch is a reliable cue to biosocial dimensions fails to account for the fact that children and adults typically develop stereotypic views and prejudices concerning groups that are unjustified (and thus uncorrelated with any observable traits or behaviors, e.g., Bereczkei and Mesko
2006; Bigler and Liben
2007; Zebrowitz
1996). Specifically, socialization research has shown that, consistent with the general principle of correspondence bias (Gilbert and Malone
1995), individuals tend to ascribe gender-stereotypic attributes to job holders that are in line with occupational sex ratios, even if those attributes are irrelevant to those jobs (Cejka and Eagly
1999). Given that sex-segregation is still a predominant feature of many jobs (Office of National Statistics
2019), the observed ratings could emerge from children’s observations of the vocal characteristics of the sex that is numerically dominant in the occupation (males’ voices being, on average, lower-pitched than females’), even if those correspondences are irrelevant to competence.
An additional possibility for children’s higher ratings of feminized voices in female-typed roles is based on children’s prior experience. From infancy, children learn to associate higher pitch voices with relational and affective skills, which are important in many stereotypically female occupations, including the ones in the present study (Guy and Newman
2004). Indeed, raised pitch appears to communicate caregivers’ affect and intentions nonverbally, and caregivers routinely increase their pitch when speaking to children as opposed to adults (Broesch and Bryant
2015; Grieser and Kuhl
1988). For instance, when mothers speak with a heightened pitch (and expanded melodic contours) they are more able to elicit and maintain infant attention, independent of what they are saying (Papoušek et al.
1990). High-pitch is also common in caregivers’ speech when conveying emotional information to children compared to speaking to adults (Kitamura and Burnham
2003).
Contrary to our hypothesis, we also found that women’s masculinized voices were not rated as more competent than the mid F0 variant for the masculine occupations. Specifically, to the extent that F0 cues for physiological masculinity in women (e.g., decreased estrogen, lower fertility Bryant and Haselton
2009; Prelevic
2013, but not testosterone: Dabbs and Mallinger
1999), more masculine female voices were expected to be rated as more competent in male jobs, but this is not what we observed. An alternative explanation for our findings is that children’s competence ratings of low-pitched women’s voices resulted from a (conscious or unconscious) compromise between perceived masculinity and overall preference for high-pitched voices in females. Previous research with adult listeners indicates that, while low-pitched voices in both men and women are perceived as more masculine (Krahé and Papakonstantinou
2020), and are preferred over high-pitched voices in male speakers, they are not preferred over high-pitched voices in female speakers (Tsantani et al.
2016). In fact, women speaking with lower-pitched voices are rated as less vocally attractive (Feinberg et al.
2008) and as having fewer favorable personality traits than higher-pitched women (e.g., Scherer
1974,
1978). Lending support to this argument, a recent study looking at job hiring preferences (Phelan et al.
2008) found that fictitious female job applicants with masculine traits were judged by adult raters as more competent, but lacking in social skills compared to applicants with feminine traits, while no such bias was found in male applicants.
Although variation in voice pitch within the two sexes influenced children’s ratings stereotypically, children rated men as significantly more competent than women in male jobs and less competent than women in female jobs, regardless of our pitch manipulations. These results suggest that speaker gender may be a stronger contributor to stereotyping than vocal variation in masculinity and femininity. It is also possible that this effect was heightened by our paradigm, given that children knew in advance the sex of the speaker and rated all speakers of the same sex in one block. Indeed, hiring bias research demonstrates that when occupational assessors are told the sex of hypothetical job candidates, stereotype-congruent associations (e.g., female/male applicants being considered for a stereotypically female/male jobs), are given more favorable evaluations than when stereotype incongruent associations are primed (e.g., female/male applicants being considered for stereotypically male/female jobs), even when applicants are equally qualified (Rice and Barth
2016).
In summary, our study shows that children use within-sex variation in vocal masculinity and femininity when making gender-stereotypical judgments of adults, as previously found in judgments of other children (Cartei et al.
2019a). Our findings also complement those of a recent voice imitation study, which showed that children link vocal masculinity/femininity to stereotypically male/female occupations (Cartei et al.
2020a), by showing that gender-linked variation influences beliefs about competence. Together these observations highlight the fact that the voice is an important aspect of children’s gender stereotyping and indicate that it can be easily used as a versatile, implicit measure of children’s gender stereotyping, through voice perception or production tasks.
To further trace the developmental trajectory of children’s occupational stereotyping (stereotype flexibility and stereotype knowledge), the present paradigm could be used with a wider range of occupations and ratings of relevant traits other than competence (e.g., dominance, friendliness). It could also be extended to younger children and adolescents to assess the degree to which voice stereotypes correlate with a child’s classification skills, knowledge about job requirements, and gender stereotype flexibility, all of which develop with age (Liben et al.
2002). Moreover, cross-cultural comparisons with our study should establish the extent to which our findings can be generalized to diverse cultural contexts, outside that of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies (Henrich et al.
2010). Our paradigm could also be used in conjunction with inter-individual measures, to investigate how individual differences in children’s occupational stereotyping may emerge. For instance, differences in exposure to division of labor in the family (Serbin et al.
1993; Fulcher et al.
2008), and on television (O’Bryant et al.
1978), both affect children’s occupational stereotyping. It would be interesting to know if and how the patterns observed in the present work would be subject to this kind of environmental influence.
Finally, given that children use gender-related voice variation to make judgments about adults in occupations, an important next step would be to explore the relative contributions of these judgments to child–adult interpersonal processes. Specifically, future studies could explore whether voice masculinity and femininity do affect children’s interactions with men and women in these roles, by using confederates and recording children’s behavioral responses during and after the interactions (e.g. asking children if they felt more comfortable to be treated by a nurse having a feminine rather than masculine voice).