Do women's voices reveal fertility?

People are attracted to voices. The voice all by itself can tell someone a lot: age, sex, mood, where they were raised, and lots more. Some studies suggest that a voice also reveals fertility. There may be cues which men can detect revealing a woman’s prime fertility opportunity. Or there may not. New research challenges some recent assertions that men can pick up on the hidden vocal message that the woman is ready to procreate.

Previous studies have used the comparison of voices recorded in just two phases in the cycle: high conception risk versus low conception risk. The new research looked at variations in the voice throughout the entire menstrual cycle rather than such narrowly focuses samples.

The new results show that the overall variation in women’s vocal quality throughout the whole cycle precludes unequivocal identification of the period with the highest fertility. While they did find that the women studied spoke with the highest tone just prior to ovulation, the tone rises again to levels indistinguishable from pre-ovulation shortly after ovulation, making it a very poor mating clue – but a clue nonetheless. When reviewing men’s reactions, they showed only a very slight preference for the pre-ovulation voice relative to the other voice samples.

These researchers concluded that while there is something going on, it’s slight and not enough to provide reliable information about the timing of ovulation. They compared the information to a leak rather than a broadcast.

Interesting, but not surprising, they found that women spoke in their harshest tones when menstruating.

Source: PLosOne, Medical NewsToday