Women’s voices tend to vary in pitch over the course of their menstrual cycle, and scientists have speculated that this might help them advertise their fertility to men. Turns out, it doesn’t.
According to Wired, researchers recorded women’s voices at various times of month, then played them back to a sample of straight men. First of all, the voices were kind of all over the place: they “were highest three days before ovulation, lowered during ovulation, then rose again.” Second, dudes didn’t show a preference for the most ovulation-y pitches. The scientists’ shocking discovery: “Different men liked different things.”
This goes against the evo-psych theory that everything women do is somehow related to getting men to knock them up. It appears that women’s speech may just possibly have some sort of non-babymaking purpose. But study author Gregory Bryant does add this creepy caveat:
People ask me if I can tell when a woman’s ovulating. I say, ‘Of course not.’ But if know a woman, and am familiar with her voice, maybe I just like her a little more that day, and I don’t know why.
If the women in his life stop talking to him, he’ll know why.
Women’s Voices Are Unreliable Sign Of Fertility [Wired]
Image via MANSUROVA YULIA/Shutterstock.com
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