| Summary: | For humans, voice pitch is highly flexible and, when lowered, makes male speakers sound more dominant, intimidating, threatening, and likely to aggress. Importantly, pitch lowering could not have evolved as a threat signal with these effects on signal receivers unless it were honest on average. Drawing on Enquist's retaliation-cost model, we tested the hypothesis that heterosexual men high in threat potential will show enhanced memory for low-pitched male voices when mating motives were activated. Supporting this hypothesis, we found that heterosexual Chinese males higher in trait aggressiveness (Experiment 1) and heterosexual U.S. males higher in upper-body strength (Experiment 2) were more accurate in distinguishing between previously heard and unheard low- but not high-pitched male voices under a mating-motive prime. We believe that this enhanced recognition accuracy for low-pitched male voices facilitates retaliation for men with high threat potential, and thereby serves to probe the honesty of pitch lowering as an aggressive signal. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.
|
|---|
