Study finds deeper male voices not more attractive when women see the speaker

A deep, Darth Vader-style voice may make a man sound more commanding, formidable and difficult to challenge, but it may not give him the romantic advantage popular culture has long suggested.

A new study by researchers at Durham University has found that women did not rate men with deeper-than-average voices as more attractive when they could also see the men’s bodies. The lower voices did, however, make the men appear stronger, better at fighting and more socially dominant.

The findings offer a fresh twist on a familiar dating stereotype: the idea that a deep voice automatically makes a man more desirable. From movie-trailer narrators and brooding action heroes to the smooth, bass-heavy voices celebrated in pop culture, vocal depth is often associated with masculinity and confidence. But the Durham research suggests that sounding powerful and looking attractive may be two different things.

Published in the journal Royal Society Open Science on September 23, 2026, the study, titled “Low voice pitch, when accompanied by video, increases perceived dominance but not attractiveness”, was conducted by psychologists James E Rutter and Lynda G Boothroyd of Durham University in the UK. The researchers wanted to investigate whether the appeal of a deep male voice, reported in several earlier experiments, would hold up when listeners could see the person speaking. Many previous studies relied on audio recordings alone, leaving participants to imagine what the speaker looked like. The new experiment brought the visual element into the picture.

For the first experiment, the team filmed 17 men aged between 19 and 32, standing in full view and counting from one to five. Their voices were digitally altered to create 12 versions of each video, combining different levels of pitch and vocal resonance. The manipulated voices ranged from very deep to high-pitched, allowing researchers to examine how changes in vocal masculinity affected people’s impressions.

A total of 1,466 adults in the US, aged between 18 and 36, took part in the experiment. Different groups assessed the men on different traits. Heterosexual women rated their attractiveness, while male participants judged their physical strength or fighting ability. Another group assessed how socially dominant the men appeared, including how respected and influential they might be among their peers.

The results did not show a clear attraction bonus for deeper-than-average voices. Women rated the high-pitched versions less favourably, but making a man's voice deeper than average did not significantly improve his attractiveness ratings compared with an average voice. The researchers said the overall pattern was largely driven by listeners' dislike of feminised vocal manipulations, rather than a special preference for extremely masculine voices.

The response was different when it came to perceptions of power. As the men's voices became deeper and more masculine, viewers consistently rated them as stronger, better at fighting and more socially dominant. In other words, a lower voice could make a man sound like a more formidable rival, even when his body was visible on screen.

The study also found that deeper voices influenced estimates of body weight. Viewers tended to guess that men with lower voices weighed slightly more, although the effect was small. The same vocal changes did not significantly alter estimates of their height.

To explore this more, the researchers conducted a second experiment involving 542 men aged between 18 and 36. Participants watched the videos and estimated the speakers' weight or height after seeing a reference video that provided a basis for their estimates. Lower pitch and more masculine resonance nudged weight estimates upwards, but did not produce a significant change in perceived height.

However, the researchers stressed that physical appearance mattered much more than vocal changes. Silent videos explained roughly 12% to 38% of the variation in people's judgements, while manipulated voice characteristics accounted for around 1% to 5%. A deeper voice could influence an impression, but it was not nearly as powerful as what viewers could actually see.

The findings also complicate the long-running scientific debate over why men's voices become deeper during puberty. One explanation is sexual selection: traits may evolve because they help individuals attract potential partners, or because they help them compete with members of their own sex. The new results lend support to the possibility that a deeper male voice may serve more of a dominance or competition-related function than an attraction-related one.

Earlier research has, in fact, suggested that the relationship between vocal depth and attractiveness is not straightforward. A 2016 study published in Behavioral Ecology, titled “A lover or a fighter? Opposing sexual selection pressures on men's vocal pitch and facial hair”, found that men's voices were perceived as most attractive at a moderately lowered pitch, rather than at the deepest level tested. Perceptions of dominance, meanwhile, increased as voices became more masculine.

There are limitations to the experiment. The videos featured only 17 white British men, while the raters came from Western countries. The participants also heard the men counting from one to five in short, controlled recordings, rather than speaking naturally in conversations. The researchers noted that everyday speech, emotional expression and other vocal qualities could affect how people judge attractiveness.

The study does not establish that women generally dislike deep voices, nor does it suggest that vocal depth is irrelevant to attraction. Its narrower finding is that, when a man's full body was visible, a deeper-than-average voice did not provide a clear additional advantage in women's attractiveness ratings.