Perception of vocal attractiveness by mandarin native listeners

Studies on Western societies show that male voices with acoustic parameters encoding a large body size (low f_o, narrow formant dispersion and f_o range) were considered attractive, while the opposite was true for female voices. The present work investigates whether Mandarin native listeners judge voices of the opposite sex in the same way. We replicated the design in [1] with the added parameter of creaky voice, which is prevalent in North America nowadays and hotly debated in terms of attractiveness. Thirty-two participants (16 female) rated the attractiveness of synthetic stimuli controlled for f_o height, formant dispersion, f_o range and voice quality. Similar to studies on Western societies, Mandarin native listeners preferred breathy and modal voices to creaky and pressed voices. Moreover, large-sounding male voices with low f_o and narrow formant dispersion were favored. However, a narrow f_o range significantly lowered the attractiveness ratings, regardless of the gender of the voice. These results are discussed in light of the cross-linguistic/cross-cultural divergences in vocal attractiveness.