LiveScience.com – Men Act Like Dogs to Determine Dominance
Men Act Like Dogs to Determine Dominance
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 31 July 2006
09:11 am ETA male dog will whine and beg in deference to a stronger dog, but will lower its voice into a guttural growl if it thinks it has a fighting chance.
Men unconsciously do a similar thing, scientists say.
A new study finds that the lower the pitch of a man’s voice, the more physically dominant other men think he is. And men lower their voice pitch when addressing a man they believe to be less dominant than themselves, but raise it when speaking to someone they think is more dominant.
Huh.. makes sense. I have a pretty deep voice, which might explain a lot :D
Follow the link for a repost of the full text.
The findings, detailed in the July issue of the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, could help explain why vocal pitch in men and women are so different.
Big and low
Vocal pitch, determined by the main frequencies in a voice, is about half as high in men as in women. This difference has traditionally been explained as a product of sexual selection, in which women favored men with lower-pitched voices.
One reason women might prefer men who speak in low voices is that vocal pitch is partly related to physical size. Taller men tend to have lower voices because they have longer vocal tracts and vocal folds, the main determinants of pitch.
Vocal anatomy is also thought to signal a man’s level of testosterone, a hormone linked to physical aggressiveness and prowess.
Studies have shown that women favor men with low, masculine voices during periods in their menstrual cycle when they’re likely to get pregnant, and also that they prefer men with lower voices for short-term sexual flings.
How the study was done
In the new study, 111 male university students took part in what they thought was a competition against another guy for a date with an attractive female student. The participants were asked to rate social and physical dominance of themselves and a competitor.
All the male participants faced the same competitor, whose voice was recorded but who was not actually present during the experiment.
To get a baseline reading of their voices, participants were first asked to read a passage aloud. They then had to respond to the competitor after listening to him give reasons why he thought other men respected or admired him.
Men who rated themselves as more physically dominant than the competitor used a lower vocal pitch when responding to him, whereas men who rated themselves as less physically dominant tended to raise it.
The costs of faking
Like whining in dogs, a man’s raising of pitch to a physically dominant man is probably an unconscious way of showing deference, said study leader David Puts of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
Men could fake it and lower their pitch to appear more dominant than they really are, but if someone calls their bluff in a real-world situation, the consequences could be severe.
“If you advertise dominance and can’t back it up, the attacks may be worse than if you had avoided the fight to begin with,” Puts told LiveScience.
An experiment with sparrows done in the 1980’s provides a case in point. Male sparrows have black patches on their chests that advertise their status to other males. The more dominant and older a male sparrow is, the bigger and darker his patch is. Researchers painted dark patches on the chests of male sparrows that weren’t very dominant before. The ruse worked for a while, but eventually the posers were challenged to fight.
“When they were, it was pretty bad for them because they couldn’t back up the dominance that they had been claiming,” Puts said.
Experiments in which wimpy female wasps were painted to mimic dominant wasps showed similar results: phonies got harassed more often and for longer periods when they got into fights.
Puts and his team think lower vocal pitch signals physical dominance more than it does social dominance, which in modern humans is typically achieved through skillful leadership and persuasion, not strength.
“Social dominance has to do with things like intelligence and social skills, which aren’t necessarily related to body size or testosterone,” Puts explained. “Ancestrally, if pitch was related to dominance, it was first related to physical dominance before anything else.”
3 Comments
Larry
More proof that much of our behavior is biology based – not as strong as instinct in animals or insects but tendencies that are supported by society (not created by society) which includes gender role definitions.
Men did not choose to have lower voices in general, to be taller than women in general, have more upper body strength, have more body hair, get more testosterone at different points in life, act more dominant among each other and with women, etc. It just gets triggered.
Is this a man excuse? No, but like women get feelings when they are PMSing or we get gas when we eat certain foods, it is still up to us to decide when to act as we feel and how to shape our behavior in style and occasion. Two thugs in the street can be aggressive and so can two football players on different teams playing ecah other. Too many people don’t like to think of the biology effect on brain structure, behavior, feelings, perception, etc. They like to think that we have so much control over our behavior or the effect of society can change anyone they have tossed out evolution for all practial matters. It’s the old nature vs. nurture – but it is not a ‘vs.’ issue. Its both and – both nature affected by nurture.
In humans we are wired, affected by chemicals, hormones and are gender driven – there are more than just pure male and female as geneder considerations. But it is still up to us to shape our behavior. Women criticize men for thinking so much about sex – too bad, that’s the way it comes out from hormones – testosterone. Men complain that women notice too many things or look at a man’s wallet as part of the way they size them up – too bad, that’s the way they’re wired and what is reinforced in society (not created by society).
The difference between people is a matter of degree not pattern. Women think of sex, men notice things – but not the same things or as much. The adage that ‘the exceptions prove the rule’ means that there is a rule to begin with to make an exception from.
We can override our nature, rules, tendencies but we often end up worse for it. Social dominance is in us – men do it and women do something like it in different ways and for different reasons. That’s just the way it goes.
Dork
Wow… seems you had a lot to get off your chest. While I agree w/ where you’re going, I just couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm as you, heh.
Sohee
Back to basics here: it’s all in the genes.What women find attractive in men is imprinted by evolution and the traditional role of the man as hunter/gatherer/protector, woman as nurturer/off-spring raiser. Like everywhere else in the animal kingdom, the dominant male has his pick of the females.
ROARRR! @ T