University researchers find voters prefer candidates with lower pitched voices, something political strategists see first hand
When voters tune into debates, watch candidates' sound bites on TV and evaluate their election choices in coming months, many are convinced they're making rational, fact-based decisions.
Scientific research suggests that's not the case. Our subconscious could have a much greater impact on our voting choices than people realize.
Candidates with lower pitched voices are perceived as stronger and more competent than candidates with higher pitched voices, the South Florida research team of political scientist Casey Klofstad and biologist Rindy Anderson found.
Given a choice, voters generally preferred the candidate with the lower pitched voice, their research shows. That was true of male and female voters. And it came through in their views of male and female candidates.
A biologist at Florida Atlantic University in Davie who studies animal behavior and animal vocal communication, Anderson sees "conscious and unconscious biases that we have that are part of our sensory system, part of our brains, part of the way we make judgments," she said.
It's not something people admit — even if they recognize it. "Nobody is going to say that. These are not necessarily conscious biases at all. It's just something that may be back there in our lizard brain, if you will, that seems to be some sort of bias," Anderson said.
The researchers aren't claiming they can predict elections, or even that voice pitch is a major factor in election outcomes or that it's more important than factors like partisanship or issues like the state of the economy, said Klofstad, a political scientist at the University of Miami.
But, he said, even before a voter starts to think about the content of a candidate's message, "you are first hearing the tone of his or her voice. And that is having an immediate impression on you."
The husband-wife team, who live in Miramar, didn't set out to study the impact of voice on political choices. They noticed while watching television news coverage that female anchors on cable TV seemed generally to have lower voices than most women. That led them to observe more closely, examine research into human voices and hone in on political candidates' voices.
"We basically combined our two interests into a blender and pressed the start button, and that's what you get. You get her with her interest in animal communication and me with my interest in politics and we applied that to see how voice pitch affects perceptions of candidates," Klofstad said.
In one experiment, people were recorded making the statement: "I urge you to vote for me this November." It was adjusted up or down so 800 subjects listening on their computers would hear the exact same statement, adjusted only for pitch. They then had to answer a series of questions: Which one is stronger, more competent, older, which would you vote for.
Anderson and Klofstad collaborated with Duke University biologist Stephen Nowicki on that study.
In another study, Klofstad collected voice samples of virtually every candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012. Controlling for other differences — incumbency, campaign spending, ideology of the district — he found that the candidate with the lower-pitched voice was usually the winner and won a higher share of the vote.
The research rings true to many in the political world.
"I'm not surprised. What people forget sometimes is that a lot of the decision making that voters make and that we make as people is not based on policy papers, is not based on positions," said Justin Sayfie, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer-lobbyist, publisher of the online political news site Sayfie Review and communications director for Jeb Bush when the Republican presidential candidate was Florida governor. "It's based on kind of subconscious decisions that are made that we too often fail to recognize."
Sayfie said a charismatic candidate who is likable can often defeat a candidate without those attributes — even attracting support from voters who don't agree with all the candidate's positions on issues.
Chip LaMarca, whose voice is on public display as a Broward County commissioner and who advised candidates in his past role as Broward Republican chairman, said it's critical for people in public life to remember that the public often remembers what they see and hear of the person, not necessarily what was said.
Former state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, said candidates and people in the business world sometimes get speech coaching to minimize use of the word "um," avoid stuttering and enunciate their words more clearly. She said she helped coach a candidate on speaking and mannerisms.
Robin Rorapaugh, a Democratic political consultant from Hollywood who's run multiple statewide campaigns, is skeptical about the value of attempting to change a candidate. "most candidates, their cadence is their cadence. You can't really coach them out of it. It matters more what they're saying than the voice tonality of what they're saying, ultimately."
Clarence V. McKee, president of McKee Communications in Coral Springs, has coached political candidates, which can involve taping a candidate and playing it back with instructions to speak more slowly, more forcefully and with a deeper voice.
"There's a certain voice in politics and radio that's distinctive and authoritative and commanding," McKee said. "I always tell people you want to sound firm and authoritative. People will say, 'I like that guy.'"
The researchers said they're not examining or making judgments about the voices of people such as Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. "We deal in the law of large numbers. We're looking at population-level judgments," Klofstad said.
Klofstad's and Anderson's work found that perceptions of strength and competence were more important to voters than perceptions of age. Still, the results could mean a bias in favor of candidates in their 40s and 50s, when voice pitch is lowest, they said.
"Perceptions of age do matter to voters," Anderson said. "People prefer candidates — both men and women — in their 40s and 50s. Older, but not too old. Very rarely did people say they would vote for a candidate in their 70s."
Among the unanswered questions:
Do people make better choices because of their subconscious biases? Unknown, Klofstad said, is whether "these perceptual biases leading us to make good choices at the polls, bad choices at the polls, or does it not really matter at the end of the day? And that's an open question."
What kinds of political races are most affected? Klofstad said it might make more of a difference in low-profile races in which people don't have a lot of information, such as a non-partisan School Board race or a primary contest in which people can't rely on party labels to distinguish among candidates.
Is there an effect on women in politics? Most women naturally have higher pitched voices than men, Anderson said. "Is that contributing even in a tiny way to how we choose our leaders and bias in favor of men."
The researchers said it's useful for people to know more about how they make judgments.
"People should be aware that we have these kinds of unconscious biases. We think of ourselves — and we are — as very sophisticated, complex beings that make very rational, reasoned choices," Anderson said. "There are also these unconscious things, these biases that we don't even admit to ourselves that we have, that can guide or behavior. Just being aware of that is really important, so that when we go to the polls we can think carefully."