London - It would appear that the key to climbing the career ladder doesn’t include what – or who – you know. The essential ingredient for a man to become a successful boss lies in a deep voice.
Research by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in North Carolina has discovered that men with lower voices make more money, run larger companies and stay in their jobs longer.
A previous study from Duke University found that voters preferred political candidates with deeper voices.
Earlier this year, a study from University College London also found that men with deeper voices are most attractive, whereas the most attractive women have “high-pitched, breathy voices”.
The research, lead by Dr Yi Xu, carried out several experiments where both men and women listened to recordings of the opposite sex speaking a sentence to test vocal attractiveness.
Deep voices are a sign of masculinity, which increased their sex appeal for women.
Men preferred women to have higher voices because it suggested they were submissive and petite.
Specialists studied 792 male chief executives of US companies and found a distinct correlation between wages and the pitch of voices.
Those with deeper voices had a distinct advantage over their high-pitched peers, as they were found to earn more.
The median chief executive officer of the study was a 56-year-old with a 125.5 hertz vocal frequency and earned £2.4 million (R33.7m) for leading a £1.5 billion company, The Times reported.
Executives with voices on the deeper end of the scale earned on average £121 000 more and ran operations with £286m more in assets.
Researchers claim lower-pitched voices are linked to dominant behaviour, because deep voices are related to high testosterone levels.
The study was conducted by Fuqua professors Bill Mayew and Mohan Venkatachalam, with Christopher Parsons of the University of California at San Diego.
“About a year ago, colleagues in the biology department looked at how voice pitch affects leadership qualities. The thought was that this might transfer to leadership positions, but no one had ever investigated it in the real world… this led to the genesis of our project,” Mayew said.
Venkatachalam added: “These findings suggest that the effects of a deep voice are salient even for the upper echelons of management in corporate America.
“It wasn’t clear to us going in that voice pitch would convey any meaningful information about a CEO given the extent to which boards of directors screen CEOs as part of the hiring and compensation decisions.”
However, Mayew said other factors still played a part and how much a deep voice affected a man’s success was still unknown.
“While a deep voice appears to correlate with various measures of labour market success, we still have little understanding of the precise mechanism by which a deep voice adds value.
“Our results advance a relatively new area of research known as biological economics by documenting that a trait known to indicate success in biological competition is also associated with success in the competition for top corporate employment.”
And it’s not just the boardroom that appreciates low, dulcet tones.
Scientists in Britain have found different vocal traits are instinctively associated with body size, attractiveness and friendliness.
They discovered the most desirable male voice for women is deep, rumbling and breathy, indicating the ideal blend of masculinity, strength and a hint of tenderness.
For women wanting to attract a man, their delivery should be high-pitched and breathy, which signals to the male psyche that they are petite, open and submissive.
“For women, it is a bit of a sexist prototype,” said lead researcher Xu, a reader in speech sciences at University College London.
“The research suggests that subconsciously, men are more attracted to a female voice that indicates friendliness and submission.
“Men prefer a voice which projects a small body size, which is higher-pitched and breathy. Marilyn Monroe is a good example.” – Daily Mail