A face for radio.It’s an expression that’s been used to describe countless disc jockeys and on-air personalities over the years. His or her voice may be great for the airways, but listeners are often disappointed to discover what the DJ actually looks like.
That’s because people ascribe to a “what-sounds-beautiful-looks-beautiful” stereotype, according to new research from Albright College.
Susan Hughes, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Albright, and an expert on voice research, has co-authored a new study with Albright alumna Noelle Miller in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that explores people’s tendency to associate attractive voices with attractive faces, and unattractive voices with unattractive faces.
On a split screen, the study’s 55 participants were shown photographs of two people. One person’s photo had previously been deemed highly attractive by independent raters; the other highly unattractive. A voice sample of a person counting from 1 to 10 was then played. Like the photos, these voice samples were previously rated as either highly attractive or highly unattractive.
Study participants were asked to assign the voice sample they heard to one of the two photos onscreen.
In a greater than chance rate, the participants assigned the attractive voice samples to the attractive photos, and the unattractive voice samples to the unattractive photos. Researchers found that the participants had an even greater propensity to pair the unattractive traits over the attractive ones.
The study, said Hughes, confirms a physical attractive stereotype known as the “Halo Effect,” which posits that if a person has one good trait you expect him or her to have other positive traits.
The study found that this “what-sounds-beautiful-looks-beautiful” stereotype assumes that a pleasant voice should match a pleasant face. When it doesn’t, it can be jarring.
“People get very upset by it,” said Hughes.
And people may tend to remember the so-called mismatches more than the matches, she said. Hughes points to more well-known examples of this, such as shock-jock Howard Stern and actress Fran Drescher, each proving that voice and face attractiveness do not always go hand-in-hand.
The research grew out of an independent study that Miller, a graduate of the Class of 2014, conducted with Hughes while she was a student at Albright.
To access the article <http://spr.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/10/22/0265407515612445.full.pdf+html>.
