Sexy People Sound Better!!!!! Watch Out!!!! How Close Can You Be????

Sexy People Sound Better!!!!! Watch Out!!!! How Close Can You Be????
LiveScience.com, By Breg Soltis (Collected By Arunava Das)
July16, 2008

People with voices deemed sexy and attractive tend to have greater body symmetry upon close inspection, suggesting that what we hear in a person can greatly affect what we see in them.

"The sound of a person's voice reveals a considerable amount of biological information," said Susan Hughes, an evolutionary psychologist from Albright College in Reading, Pa. "It can reflect the mate value of a person."

Hughes, whose new study is detailed in the June 2008 edition of the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, cautions that an attractive voice does not necessarily indicate that this person has an attractive face.

A symmetric body is genetically sound, scientists say, and in evolutionary terms, in the wild, it can be an important factor when selecting a mate. But sometimes changes during prenatal development can slightly skew this balance. For instance, the length ratio between index and ring fingers, known as the digit ratio, is fixed by the first trimester, a time that corresponds with vocal cord and larynx development. If the hormone surge that affects vocal development also affects finger growth, there should be a connection between an individual's voice and digit ratio.

Hughes could not demonstrate a connection between voice attractiveness and digit ratio in her previous work, possibly due to vocal changes that occur during puberty. So in the new study, about 100 individuals listened to previously recorded voices and independently rated them on nine traits important during mate selection: approachability, dominance, healthiness, honesty, intelligence, likelihood to get dates, maturity, sexiness and warmth.

Study participants generally agreed on what made a voice attractive. But when Hughes used a spectrogram to analyze these voice ratings according to different acoustic properties such as pitch, intensity, jitter and shimmer, she could not find a common feature that made these voices seem attractive.

This indicates our perceptual system may be more advanced than expected.

"We can agree on what's an attractive voice yet I can't capture it with a computer," Hughes told LiveScience.said.

Investigating if a combination of these properties can define an attractive voice may shed light on a connection, she said.

10 Tips for a Healthy Voice

Hogikyan and colleagues have put together the following 10 tips to help keep your voice in shape:
1. Drink water to keep your body well hydrated, and avoid alcohol and caffeine. Your vocal cords vibrate very fast, and having a proper water balance helps keep them lubricated. Important note: Foods containing large amounts of water are excellent hydration-conscious snacks, including apples, pears, watermelon, peaches, melons, grapes, plums, bell peppers and applesauce.
2. Allow yourself several "vocal naps" every day, especially during periods of extended use. For instance, teachers should avoid speaking during the breaks between classes and find quiet ways to spend the lunch hour rather than talking in a noisy staff room with colleagues.
3. Don't smoke, or if you already do, quit. Smoking raises the risk of throat cancer tremendously, and inhaling smoke (even secondhand smoke) can irritate the vocal cords.
4. Don't abuse or misuse your voice. Avoid yelling or screaming, and try not to talk loudly in noisy areas. If your throat feels dry or tired, or your voice is getting hoarse, reduce your voice use. The hoarseness is a warning sign that your vocal cords are irritated.
5. Keep your throat and neck muscles relaxed even when singing high notes and low notes. Some singers tilt their heads up when singing high notes and down when singing low notes. "The high notes are on the ceiling and the low notes are on the floor," Rosenberg says. "Over time, you'll pay for that"—not just with strained vocal muscles but also by causing future limits on the vocal range.
6. Pay attention to how you speak every day. Even performers who have good singing habits can cause damage when they speak. Many skilled singers don't continue their healthy habits when they speak; indeed, says Herseth, "many people—including singers—should have much more breath flow when they speak."
7. Don't clear your throat too often. When you clear your throat, it's like slamming your vocal cords together. Doing it too much can injure them and make you hoarse. Try a sip of water or swallow to quench the urge to clear. If you feel like you have to clear your throat a lot, get checked by a doctor for such things as acid reflux disease, or allergy and sinus conditions.
8. When you're sick, spare your voice. Don't talk when you're hoarse due to a cold or infection. Listen to what your voice is telling you.
9. When you have to speak publicly, to large groups or outdoors, think about using amplification to avoid straining your voice.
10. Humidify your home and work areas. Remember, moist is good for the voice.

Deep-Voice Men Have More Kids
If you want to have lots of kids, look for a Barry White instead of a Justin Timberlake. Men with a deep voices have more offspring, a new study suggests.
Previous studies conducted by David Feinberg of McMaster University in Canada have shown that women are more attracted to men with deeper voices, judging them to be older, healthier and more masculine than their higher-pitched rivals.
Men, on the other hand, go for women with higher pitched voices because they find them more attractive, subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger-sounding.
In the new study, detailed in a recent issue of the journal Biology Letters, Feinberg set out to see how that attraction to deeper-voiced men affected reproduction and the survival of offspring.
"While we find in this new study that voice pitch is not related to offspring mortality rates," Feinberg said, "we find that men with low voice pitch have higher reproductive success and more children born to them."