Why Walrus of Love's voice scares young girls

Published on Monday 14 September 2009 22:15

AS GIRLS become teenagers they find deeper voices more attractive, while younger girls find them intimidating, according to new research from St Andrews University.

Younger girls felt lower-pitched voices reminded them of scary characters like Darth Vader, while older girls seemed to tap into a Barry White factor.

Academics manipulated the images and the voices of males digitally, to make the faces more or less masculine and the voices sound lower or higher in pitch.

Adolescents between the ages of 11 and 15 years old were then asked to rate the faces and voices for attractiveness. The aim was to discover how the perception of who and what is attractive changes during this crucial time in human development.

Psychologists believe the preference changes might help guide teenagers as they begin their first romantic relationships.

Researchers found the older girls had clearer preferences for boys with deeper voices. Boys who were further through puberty had stronger preferences for more masculine faces in other boys, while the more developed girls had the strongest preferences for low-pitched male voices.

However, the researchers found that for the younger girls the deeper voices might have sounded intimidating.

One girl said that the low voices reminded her of Darth Vader, but for the older girls, they were more attractive.

"Think Barry White," said the researchers.

Tamsin Saxton, a postdoctoral research fellow at the university's school of psychology, led the research, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) .

She said: "People start trying out adult relationships during their teenage years, and we see changes in perceptions of what's most attractive. It's then that you're learning about what's attractive in a partner.

"It's also a time when your peers are changing a lot in their appearance, for example, boys' faces become more masculine, and their voices deepen in pitch, so maybe teens are responding to the changes they see around them."

The paper "Face and voice attractiveness judgment change during adolescence" is to be published in the scientific journal Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Previously scientists have found deep voices are more attractive to women.

But researcher Dr David Feinberg, of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, in the past warned men not to try improving their luck by affecting a deeper voice.

He said: "It's really easy to tell when somebody's faking these things."