Powerful People Have High-Pitched Voices — And Are Messy Eaters

We all know that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But did you know that it can also make your voice high-pitched and turn you into a messy eater? The Guardian reports that a new study by psychologists found that “voices change according to a speakers’ position of power.” We assume that leaders have smooth and low voices, but researchers “found that those coming from a position of ‘power’ – 161 students had been divided into high and low ranking groups and asked to read the same passage aloud – spoke in a higher pitch, and although their volume varied, their voices also became more monotone.” This finding seems to run counter to the idea that a low voice bespeaks leadership (vocal coaches generally tell politicians to lower their voices). The researchers noted that although Margaret Thatcher’s voice “got deeper overall thanks to voice coaching, the researchers told MailOnline that it got higher pitched in ‘power situations’.”

The change in your voice does not go unnoticed. “A second experiment with a separate group of college students revealed that listeners, who had no knowledge of the first experiment, were able to pick up on these power-related vocal cues to determine who did and did not have power,” reports the Association of Psychological Science. “Listeners ranked speakers who had been assigned to the high-rank group as more likely to engage in high-power behaviors, and they were able to categorize whether a speaker had high or low rank with considerable accuracy.” It’s not just the pitch of your voice that changes when you become powerful. You become messy. In one series of experiments, three people were left in a room with five cookies on a plate before them. One of the three was assigned “the Boss” position. Each of the three people took one cookie, but “the Boss” took two, and the study found “they were also more likely to eat with their mouth open, with crumbs spilling all over themselves and the table.”