Men Get Riskier Around Women With High Voices, Study Finds

Beauty isn’t the only thing that entices men. A recent study published by Personality and Individual Differences in November found that some men are willing to risk it all for a woman with a high-pitched voice. 

Researchers from the University in Shanghai believe that risk-taking—characterized by engaging in actions that may lead to negative consequences in search of greater rewards — exhibits distinct gender patterns, particularly heightened among males in response to mating-related cues. Their study, titled “The Siren Call,” aimed to examine how the tone of voice guidance influences driving behavior in a virtual reality (VR) environment, specifically targeting a group of Chinese heterosexual males.

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The experiment was broken into two steps.

In step one of the unique study, participants provided informed consent and completed surveys about their driving experience and risk perception. After familiarizing themselves with the driving simulator and putting on their VR headset, they navigated a series of intersections while receiving either high or low-tone instructions from a female voice. Throughout the experiment, participants had to decide whether to proceed through yellow traffic lights or stop, with their choices serving as indicators of risk-taking behavior. Results revealed a significant difference between the groups: those receiving high-tone instructions were more likely to go through yellow lights than those in the low-tone condition.

Part two of the experiment investigated how female voice pitch affected male risk-taking behaviors across various behavioral paradigms and socio-cultural contexts. Building on the work of W.E. Frankenhuis’ 2010 study, the experiment utilized a 2 × 2 between-subjects design to measure risk-taking through the speed of crossing a virtual suspension bridge. The first independent variable was the pitch of the female voice, categorized as high or low. The second independent variable was the sociocultural context, which either encouraged or discouraged risk-taking. The dependent variable was the speed at which participants crossed a plank bridge in a VR environment.

Here are the results of The Siren Call study.

The results from both tests indicated that men were more inclined to take significant risks, as evidenced by their increased propensity to speed through yellow lights and cross the virtual bridge when exposed to a high-pitched female voice. However, in the second experiment, when male participants were informed that women preferred safe partners, the high-pitched voice did not correlate with riskier behavior, the study noted.

The study suggested that the context significantly influences how voice pitch affects male risk-taking, however; in the future, researchers from the University in Shanghai hope to extend the study further to consider cultural factors and how they may impact men’s risky behavior from different parts of the world.

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