'Caveman instincts' may favor deep-voiced politicians

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/du-im080515.php

Public Release: 7-Aug-2015
'Caveman instincts' may favor deep-voiced politicians
Deeper voices convey strength, competence more than age and experience
Duke University

When political candidates give a speech or debate an opponent, it's not just what they say that matters -- it's also how they say it.

A new study by researchers at the University of Miami and Duke University shows that voters naturally seem to prefer candidates with deeper voices, which they associate with strength and competence more than age.

The researchers say our love for leaders with lower-pitched voices may harken back to "caveman instincts" that associate leadership ability with physical prowess more than wisdom and experience.

"Modern-day political leadership is more about competing ideologies than brute force," said study co-author Casey Klofstad, associate professor of political science at Miami. "But at some earlier time in human history it probably paid off to have a literally strong leader."

Part of a larger field of research aimed at understanding how unconscious biases nudge voters towards one candidate or another, the findings are scheduled to appear online Friday, Aug. 7, in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

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Most people would like to think they make conscious, rational decisions about who to vote for based on careful consideration of the candidates and the issues, Klofstad said.

"We think of ourselves as rational beings, but our research shows that we also make thin impressionistic judgments based on very subtle signals that we may or may not be aware of."

Biases aren't always bad, Klofstad said. It may be there are good reasons to go with our gut.

"But if it turns out that people with lower voices are actually poorer leaders, then it's bad that voters are cuing into this signal if it's not actually a reliable indicator of leadership ability."

"Becoming more aware of the biases influencing our behavior at the polls may help us control them or counteract them if they're indeed leading us to make poor choices," Klofstad said.

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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/uom-cvp080615.php

Public Release: 7-Aug-2015
Candidate voice pitch influences voters
University of Miami researcher finds that the tone of candidates' voices can help (or hurt) at the polls
University of Miami

Two new studies show that the tone of a candidate's voice can influence whether he or she wins office.

"Our analyses of both real-life elections and data from experiments show that candidates with lower-pitched voices are generally more successful at the polls," explains Casey Klofstad, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, who is corresponding author on both studies.

The first study, published online in Political Psychology, shows that candidates who ran in the 2012 U.S. House elections and had lower voices were more likely to win their elections. These findings are more complex, however, once the sex of the candidate and his or her challenger is accounted for. When facing male opponents, candidates with lower voices won a larger vote share. But, when facing female opponents, candidates with higher voices were more successful and particularly so in the case of male candidates. "As individuals with lower voices have higher levels of testosterone, and as testosterone correlates with physical and social aggressiveness, it could be that male candidates with lower voices are perceived as too aggressive when paired against a female opponent," Klofstad said.

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tags: influence,