Contextualising courtship: Exploring male body odour effects on vocal modulation
Image credit: Juan David Leongómez 2020Resumen
Voice characteristics are important to communicate socially relevant information. Recent research has shown that individuals alter their voices depending on the context of social interactions and perceived characteristics of the audience, and this affects how they are perceived. Numerous studies have also shown that the presence of bodily odours can elicit psychological changes in people. Here, we tested whether the presence of male axillary odour would influence vocal modulations in courtship contexts. We analysed differences in vocal parameters and attractiveness ratings across 950 recordings from 80 participants as they responded to opposite sex target stimuli. Using these, we tested whether men’s and women’s vocal parameters and perceived attractiveness differed in the presence or absence of the odour. We expected women to speak with increased voice F0, and men to lower their pitch, when exposed to male body odour, especially if it were of high quality. However, neither the presence of male odour, its quality, nor the addition of androstadienone produced any consistent changes in vocal parameters. Nevertheless, rated stimulus attractiveness was predicted by F0 and especially F0 variability, suggesting that this is a key parameter in signalling attraction during human courtship, and supporting the idea that vocal modulations are context-sensitive.
Juan David Leongómez
Profesor Asociado
Mis intereses de investigación incluyen los procesos de selección de pareja y la comunicación vocal en humanos, con una aspiración hacia la comprensión de la musicalidad. También estoy interesado en bioacústica y psicoacústica, así como en estadística y programación en .
Oscar R. Sánchez
Profesor Titular
Profesor e Investigador/Director de EvoCo: Laboratorio de Evolución y Comportamiento Humano de la Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad El Bosque en Bogotá, Colombia.
Milena Vásquez-Amézquita
Profesora Asociada / Co-supervisión PhD 2015-2018 / Supervisión Postdoc 2021-2022
Profesora Asociada e investigadora en Neurociencia de la Universidad El Bosque. Interesada en investigación sobre los mecanismos cognitivos que subyacen a los trastornos del estado de ánimo y la conducta sexual.
S. Craig Roberts
Profesor Titular
Profesor Titular de Etología Humana (Division of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, Reino Unido), y expresidente de la International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE).