For many people, Barry White crooning in his thick, honey voice how he “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe,” is the ultimate sound of desire and sexual attraction. American television host David Letterman once asked the singer to read a list of mundane words, including “gingivitis” and “gubernatorial,” to prove they would sound romantic in White’s bass-baritone voice. They certainly did.
Research confirms that deep voices give men an aura of power and sexual allure. Men with low, resonant voices are more likely to be perceived as attractive, masculine, respectable, and dominant. “Judgments of anything that contributes to success in competition—age, size, muscle mass, confidence, leadership—they are all strongly affected by voice pitch,” says Carolyn Hodges-Simeon, an anthropologist at Boston University.
This preference for virile voices extends beyond cisgender, heterosexual, industrialized contexts. One study found that single homosexual men rate low-pitched voices as more attractive. In another study of trans men undergoing testosterone therapy, vocal masculinization was found to be the most important trait participants wished to change. Achieving a deep voice is also associated with greater well-being in trans men. Among Hadza hunter-gatherers in Northern Tanzania, women perceive men with lower voices to be better hunters, and such men father more children, possibly because they are considered more attractive and high status.
Given the widespread fondness for baritones and basses across various sexual identities and cultures, it seems likely that there is an evolutionary reason behind this preference and that vocal pitch may have been an important element in how humans selected mates for millennia. But why would that be?
