Sometimes all a person needs to do is have a certain accent that we love, and we think they’re ll-cool-date. For years now we’ve known that the voice really affects how attractive we find someone – or more accurately – how immediately unattractive it can be. Over and over it’s found that there are certain pitches of voice that the sexes are attracted to – generally guys like higher pitched voices in girls, and girls like lower pitched voices in guys). However, a new study now also tells us that guys can use their ears to detect levels of female fertility. And they find it sexy as hell.
For decades, the scientific community has been doing experiments to try and find out whether there are ways men can tell women are fertile – and whether this makes any difference to the way they act. It certainly does in the rest of the animal kingdom, but unfortunately, it’s not like we’re baboons and can tell if women are fertile just by looking.
So up to now there’s been very little evidence about whether guys or girls can tell if a woman is fertile based only on what they can see, smell or hear. And this is where this new study has found something amazing: guys can actually hear in a girl’s voice when she’s fertile, and they seriously love it. The thing is, guys don’t actually know that it’s fertility making the girls sound sexy – all they know is that they love a fertile voice more than a non-fertile one.
First, the researchers recorded a heap of women who were asked to leave a fake message for a guy they wanted to date. However, they recorded the women leaving the message twice – once in the six days just before they ovulated (most fertile time) and once in the six days before menstruation (least fertile). Second, they then played guys one of the messages (not knowing the conditions that it had been recorded under) and just asked them to rate how attractive they found the voice on a scale of 1 to 100. Results showed conclusively that guys were significantly more attracted to voices recorded in the fertile range. Those that know a little about voices might criticize the design of the study, saying that it’s common knowledge that the voice is affected by menstrual cycle (it makes it lower) and so all the guys are actually attracted to is a higher-pitched voice. The interesting part is, even when differences in pitch was accounted for, guys still found the fertile voices significantly more attractive.
Now for the good bit: how I think girls can use this to their advantage! Firstly, my apologies to the guys – there’s not much benefit for you here – except maybe that it might give you insight into why you’re attracted to certain people at certain times, and not others. Oh, and to remember that girls (on average) prefer deeper voices.
But girls, there’s certainly an upside for you. If you’re looking for a guy, make the most of your most fertile week! You’re going to sound more attractive then, than at other times in the cycle – and you don’t even have to change/do anything! And make the most of this opportunity – if you have the chance then perhaps choose to go somewhere where they can hear you talk rather than just look at you. You know you’ve got something interesting to say. And now they’re going to want to hear it just that little bit more.
Lastly, an apology. I know this article is very cis-gendered and hetero-normative in orientation. I apologize for this narrowness, but the study only collected data on heterosexual participants looking at opposite genders.