When it comes to remembering a male, women rely heavily on the deep pitch of a male’s voice and will use this information when it comes to choosing a mate.
A new UK study conducted by David Smith and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen, found that a low masculine voice is important for both mate choice and the accuracy of women’s memory.
The findings, which have been published online in Springer’s journal, Memory & Cognition, suggest that a woman’s memory is sensitive to a male’s voice pitch.
“Our findings demonstrate that women’s memory is enhanced with lower pitch male voices, compared with the less attractive raised pitch male voices,” Smith said.
“Our two experiments indicate for the first time that signals from the opposite sex that are important for mate choice also affect the accuracy of women’s memory.”
So how does it work? Smith and colleagues found that the pitch of a male’s voice is important for mate choice because it can indicate genetic quality as well as signal behavioural traits which woman may find undesirable in a long-term partner.
In order to select and eliminate a potential partner, women rely on their memories to rapidly provide information about the attributes and past behaviour of potential partners.
During the study two experiments were conducted. The first involved 45 women who were initially shown an image of a single object while listening to the name of the object, spoken either by a high- or low-pitch male or female manipulated voice.
The women were also shown two similar but not identical versions of the object. They were then asked to identify the one they had seen earlier and which voice they preferred.
The second experiment saw researchers use real male and female voices to test how 46 new women rated the voices and how they scored on object memory.
Both experiments found that women had a strong preference for the low-pitch male voice and remembered objects more accurately when they had been introduced by the deep male voice.
“We think this is evidence that evolution has shaped women’s ability to remember information associated with desirable men,” Dr Kevin Allan, who supervised the research, said.
“Good memory for specific encounters with desirable men allows women to compare and evaluate men according to how they might behave in different relationship contexts, for example a long-term committed relationship versus a short-term uncommitted relationship.
“This would help women to pick a suitable partner, and that’s a particularly important ability to have because the costs of poor mate-choice decisions can be severe.”
