Linking men‘s voice pitch to actual and perceived trustworthiness across domains

Previous research suggests that judgments about a male speaker’s trustworthiness vary due to the speaker’s voice pitch (mean F0) and differ across domains. Mixed results in terms of the direction and extent of such effects have been reported, however. Moreover, no study so far has investigated whether men’s mean F0 is, indeed, a valid cue to their self-reported and behavioral trustworthiness, and whether trustworthiness judgments are accurate. We tested the relation between mean F0 and actual general, economic and mating-related trustworthiness in 181 men, as well as trustworthiness judgments of 95 perceivers across all three domains. Analyses show that men’s mean F0 is not related to Honesty-Humility (as a trait indicator of general trustworthiness), trustworthy intentions, or trust game behavior, suggesting no relation of mean F0 to general or economic trustworthiness. In contrast, results suggest that mean F0 might be related to mating-related trustworthiness (as indicated by self-re...