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Can you tell how someone looks based only on how they sound?
Why yes, you can!
Hey everyone, Laci Green here for D News.
Think of the last time you talked
on the phone with someone that you've never met before.
What kind of assumptions, if any,
did you make about how the person looks
based on their voice?
A common one would be their sex, which is usually, but not
always, obvious.
Males with high voices and females with low voices
can sometimes cause some confusion.
You may be able to tell their approximate age.
Grandmas and children do tend to sound a little different.
But what about what their voice says
about their height, their weight, maybe even their race.
A new study coming out of Washington University and UCLA
a confirms past studies that people
can tell someone's height just by hearing their voice.
The participants heard various voices
saying meaningless words, and then
were asked to pick who was tallest, who was shortest,
and to rate five voices in order of height.
Now, the participants were accurate
63% of the time, which, OK, admittedly is not
extremely accurate, but it's definitely much higher
than if they were picking randomly.
The researchers also figured out how
people were able to accurately guess someone's height--
subglottal resonances.
Sounds fancy, no?
Subglottal Resonances are the sound
that come from the lower airways,
below the Adam's Apple, if you have one.
They describe it like blowing into a glass bottle.
If the bottle's big, there's more room for resonating,
and if it's small, there's less room.
So the taller you are, the more your voice resonates,
and the more your voice resonates,
the deeper it sounds.
The researchers found that people
were able to pick up on very subtle technical differences
in these subglottal resonances, which could be particularly
useful for busting criminals.
Because sometimes the only clue about what a person looks like
happens over the phone.
Another claim that I've heard is that people
can tell over the phone how heavy someone is.
Could body weight affect these subglottal resonances?
Several studies have taken a look and busted the myth.
So far, none have found conclusive evidence
that gaining or losing weight affects your voice.
And what about race?
A person's race is sometimes connected
to a geographical area, which is then
connected to a particular dialect or accent,
and in this case, it might be easier
to identify someone's race because you
know where they're from.
But what about when people of different races
are from the same area?
Then, they all have similar speech patterns.
Could you tell a black American from a white American
from a Latino American who are all from the same city?
Scientists studied this in depth.
They looked at how physiology varies by race
and discovered that it's an enormous, tangled mess, as you
might expect when you try to pinpoint
physiological differences by something socially constructed.
But hey, that's a story for a different day.
The takeaway here is that controlling
for dialect and accent, there's no evidence
that you can tell the race of someone
just by talking to them on the phone.
Thanks for tuning into D News, everyone.
If you're interested in vocal matters,
you should check out Trace's video
about why we hate our own voice.
And we'll catch you soon with more science updates.