What is the secret of success? The most typical answer to this question has always been “hard work.” And while it certainly helps, there are plenty of factors that help explain why some people succeed and others don’t. A very important one is the image we project on others. If we are perceived as confident and charismatic people, we are more likely to run into more open doors.
Which also includes the voice.
How do you sound. This is illustrated by a study published a few days ago by the Journal of Management Studies. Entitled “It’s Not What You Say It’s How You Sound”, it analyzes the impact that the tone of voice of the UK’s top CEOs, those at the helm of the country’s top 100 companies, had on their salary escalation. The researchers analyzed their different trajectories over a decade, focusing on the first three years of each to control for the effect their financial results later might have on shareholders.
The key. What they found along the way was a pro-male voice bias on the part of the boards of directors. As Quartz explains in this article, those deep, deep voices benefited from salary increases up to 6% above the rest. The job controls for a wide range of factors, whether it be the experience of each CEO, their education, or their own personal relationship with the board. That is to say, there is an unconscious and evolutionary prize towards voices perceived as “strong”.
Measuring. Given that our timbre changes and evolves over the years, generally towards gravity, the study focused on an immutable element of the voice: the dispersion areas of the formants, the peak of intensity of the sounds that we emit when pronouncing a vowel. According to the researchers, it is a measure of resonance that helps shape the “depth” of vowels. One that does not usually change and that allows a stable measurement for several years.
Is the memory. What is the bias? Evolutionary psychology has several things to say here. We have known for years that we associate male voices with greater “strength.” A major masculinity perceived of a timbre, that is to say, the greater depth and gravity, greater sense of security. This is related to the traditional weight that physical strength had on humans since the dawn of civilization. A man who spoke in a low and resonant way it was strong, and therefore had a more prominent position in social groups.
The 21st century. In present terms, this translates to an almost intuitive confidence in CEOs who enjoy lower voices. Although your physical strength no longer matters to run a business. It is not something exclusive to the bell: we have seen on occasion how both the regional accent and the social accent are determining factors when it comes to accessing a job. Speaking with regional or neighborhood lexicon has huge penalties in the selection processes (all things being equal).
Influence everything. And it’s not just how you speak, but also how you move through life. The richest people or people belonging to the highest classes tend to function with a higher self-confidence than the rest (even if they are not better or worse performing a task), which favors them in the labor market (they give the impression of being more qualified). The same goes for the suppression of guilt or immoral actions, more typical among wealthy people. A vital attitude that in one way or another affects the environment and allows for faster escalation in the labor market.
Starting, of course, from a more privileged position. As much as trying is very good, success is more related to luck (where you are born) than with talent. Who could blame the rest of humanity for having stopped believing in the hard work mantra.