The Barry White Effect

But no, it's good to you went for Verry White, because today we're talking about the very wide effect. We're talking a little bit about Barry White, a little bit about Marilyn Monroe, throwing in some koalas here and there.

But but first, let let's just talk very briefly about Marilyn Monroe and Barry White from sort of a cultural standpoint, like both of these are icons of sex appeal that really may not hold up as we were discussing earlier, to uh to, to modern pop culture standards, and certainly to any individual out there, you might not think, oh, well, you know, Verry Wide is the the be all of male sexuality or you might you might not have Marilyn Monroe posters all over your dorm room. Um, but they

still have this sort of iconic um power to them. Yeah, they do. They are just brimming with sexuality. And some of that is because of the type of music that very White created. It was very much like I'm gonna put the player on and we're gonna get down right now. He wasn't doing historical ballads about you know, about the battles in in history or anything. He was very much

get down to business. And in terms of Marylyn Row, I mean she is sort of like a female through the cultural lens completely, you know, um, characaturist, sort of the Betty boot living Betty boop. Yeah, and she does for the roles she played. I don't recall ever having seen Marilyn Monroe movie where she threw a karate chop or um, you know, or fought an alien on a space ship. It was it was very much Marilyn on her as Marilyn Monroe. Um, you know, copy and paste,

repeat right. That was her purview, right. She wasn't trying to put forward this idea of a balanced idea of what a woman could be or should be. So here we have these big iconic presences and we have a couple of studies to actually relate to them. And at the bottom of all this, there's this idea that we might actually have a voice prejudice. We might hear certain voices and gravitate toward them. And we're going to explore

this idea. Yeah, and and and that end of itself when we can all relate to that there are certain voices that are going to annoy us in our lives, and we're gonna have certain uh taste that revolve around other voices. Like it's like some people are gonna be really annoyed by a high nasal voice or or even a really deep voice. I could say that as being annoying. I mean, there's so many like everything that we've discussed

concerning where the human condition meets uh Darwinian evolution. There's there's what we have evolved to be, and then there's the complications that have arisen from the ascension of human consciousness and the layers of culture we put over everything well, and one of the ways that we try to cut through all of that and try to figure out whether or not there's some sort of baseline two voices, and the way that we react to them is we look

to the animal world, specifically residents, frequencies, and animals. So we've seen studies of animals and birds that reveal that listeners can figure out body size and what the intent of the collar is based our frequency, voice quality, and format spacing. So this format spacing is really important because as we're going to go on and talk about these lower pitches, those are really are at the heart of

what makes something very low pitched. So essentially, lower pitched vocalizations are less space between something called formats okay, and these formats uh, These frequencies are emphasized frequencies within vocalizations and humans, formats are essential to speech and they help us to distinguish between vowels. So, in effect, an animals roar or vocal communication of its choice is going to

be a key to its size. The lower, more baritone sounds are going to say hey, I'm a big animal, as opposed to the higher ones that would say hey, I'm a smaller animal. Yeah. I mean, there's this idea that pure tone like sounds are more likely to suggest a smaller size, submissiveness and fear that sounds yeah like that. Yeah, yeah.

Now one particular study, because because you want specific examples of this, I'm sure we would looked at a two thousand and eleven study publishing the Journal of Experimental Biology, and they looked at koala bears. Now, koala bears, if you don't know anything about up them, you might think of them as purely a sexual creatures that live only on you know, tree limbs or in baby cribs. You know,

they're Steph quala airs. I mean, they're very adorable looking, but of course, like any animal, they engaged and rather raucous sexual life all their own. UM. We've we've discussed in the past lesbian qualas that will push one another up against plants and and have their way, and so you know, the kualas are a decent place to look for examples of of this kind of vocal frequency. UM

is used as a kind of mating signature. And indeed they found it by um that the that the male qualas advertise their size by changing the residents of their calls lower resonance. Again called formats have a more baritone quality, and that just just telling the lady quala is out there Hey, I'm big. I'm a big kuala and the the underlying theme here is that I'm a big koala

that can fight off other koalas. So if you, if you hear me, guys, know that I am a rather sizeable opponent, you know, on a mess with me, and ladies, I am a preferred nate because as a large koala, I'm more likely to give you large koala offspring who will in turn have mating success in their lives. So there's a very you know, hardcore Darwinian message here. Uh, I mean, it all comes down to the passing of jeans one generation to the next and trying to gain

the next generation for success. Yeah, and uh this actually points to the research of a group of twenty male kualas during the kuala breeding season at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Australia. And usually these guys, these little cute marsupials, are pretty quiet this the year, but when it is

mating season they do have that deep, choppy growl. And so, as you say, the promise here and the research that was born out here is again there's a larger body size headsize that's correlated with the lower frequencies and this idea of hey, I'm going to create more competitive offspring for you. And in the case of something like a foul dear, a low frequency growl that's heard off in the distance might discourage another would be suitors to a

fellow dough, let's say, to retreat from the area. So it's not just like hey, I'm gonna give you some really sturdy young n's, but it could also be something of a play that's kind of like, hey, you better step off because I'm in the area. All right. So this, i'll leads to the inevitable question what about humans? Is it? Is it the same with us? What about Barry White? And indeed had his very white factor because Barry White, just to to to remind everyone, was a very big man.

I mean he he struggled with obesity, you know, most of his adult life, but he's also six four. He was a big dude, an imposing figure, but also one that that again became iconic because he had this uh this kind of soft, uh teddy bear kind of quality to him as well, like you never doubted that he could he could stand up for himself and he could put a new place. But he was a approachable he was.

He had this lovable charm and charisma about him. Well, there is a study that was published in Plos one called human vocal attractiveness as Signaled by body size projection, and this looks at both high frequency and low frequency and it found, let's look at the males first, that male listeners preferred female voices with high pitch, breathy voice in wide format spacing because it correlated with a smaller body size. Does this sound like anyone you've ever known? President?

I think that was that was pretty spot on. It's kind of hard to do. Um. Now, a breathy voice is indicative of the higher pitches that you would see in younger, thinner vocal cords. So there's this idea that it is suggesting that it's a youthful person. Um. And then it is achieved by increasing the amount of air passing through vocal chords, giving it an aspirated quality. For female listeners, of course, they they prefer that deep, husky

male voice. But again, not only doesn't need to be a deep voice, it needs to be that breathy voice. And again think of Barry White. Uh, the breathiness to it. It has this kind of calmness too, is saying, yeah, I'm a big I'm a big guy, but I'm not a dangerous guy. I'm an approachable guy. I'm a lovable guy. Uh. For instance, John Goodman's voice we're discussing earlier generally does not come up as possessing very wide qualities, even though John Goodman is UH is of course a big man

with a very deep, very deep voice. But in most of the most like interviews I've seen with him, and and certainly in any of his film roles, he tends to have a very abrasive quality and and it's kind of a fast talker much of the time, and kind of a grumbling nature to everything he says that. So it doesn't have that breath equality. It doesn't. He doesn't have that teddy bear quality that you get with Barry White, and that, as this study reveals, that's what UH female

listeners are supposedly going for. Yeah, the idea is that that breathiness kind of mitigates any sort of aggressivity that might be perceived in the voice. So you go, oh, what a gentle giant. So you'll see information all throughout scientific literature that a deep voice is part and parcel of sexual selection and that men with low frequency short space formats have more sexual hookups. You'll see this in literature.

In fact, there's a paper by the name of voice Pitch Predicts Reprotective Success and Male Hunter Gathers, and it bears out the fact that the men of the Hodza people are a Tanzanian hunter gathers assired far more children than their higher pitched counterparts. That's important to note that they went to a secluded community like this to conduct this study, because once you start factoring in things like birth control, that just kind of excused the whole human

mating platform. Now, one of the things that excuse this idea of lower pitch voices as part and parcel of sexual selection. K evolution is a paper published by Lee Simmons at All in the December twenty eleven issue of p l O S One, and it says, hey, men with deeper attractive voices may have lower sperm quality than then with less attractive voices. And this was determined by seamen analysis which revealed that men with deeper voices have

lower scores on seven motility parameters. Now we're talking about fifty four male participants from the University of Western Australia. They were recruited for this and this is just one study, but I think it gives you the idea that it's not quite as cut and dried as some of the literature in the past would put out there. And researchers believe that the lower sperm quality reflects a trade off

that comes with having to compete for mats. Okay, because if you were a say this the squirrelier uh mail with a higher voice or the sort of annoying voice, you you may not get that many shots at the prize. So when you do, it's got to count. But if you are the very wide of the Kuala world world, you know you've got numerous opportunities to at the bullside.

Alright'm gonna take a quick break and we're going to talk about something else that actually maked Trump the Verry White and Maryland Monroe voice, and it has to do with our own voices. All Right, we are back and during the break, um Noel, our producer, myself and Robert had this quick little discussion of who could actually take on the mantle of Barry White these days, Who is

the modern Berry White, who can deliver all that sultry fuzziness. Yeah, and I was thinking, like I was thinking, okay, John Goodman, No, that didn't work. And I was like running through all these different names of like sort of big or deep voiced, you know, male actors or celebrities, and none of them were really clicking. Like all of them just seemed a little off. But Noel nailed it. He said, I got it,

And he said Scarlett Johanson. Yeah, because Scarlett Johnson has this wonderful, like husky female voice that I I ventured to say a lot of people find attractive. It's great. And what I love about it is is this little gender twist, because really it's sort of if you took all of the best aspects of Marilyn and Rose voice and Barry Whites and put it together, and man, I would love to have her voice. That would be great.

It is. It is a really good voice. I've admired it since uh was it a ghost World back in the day. Yeah, well admired. Well done, Scarlett. All Right, So we we may love all the huskiness, the breathiness, but it turns out that ultimately we just love to hear ourselves in others. That trumps everything. Else. Yeah. A new University of British Columbia study finds that we prefer voices that are similar to our own. And the reason here is because they convey These voices convey a soothing

sense of community and social belongingness. It's the known quantity right right, So we automatically be connect and we begin to empathize with some anounce if they sound like us. And Molly Babbel great last name, by the way, a professor in the Department of Linguistics and her colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz asked college age participants in California to rate the attractiveness of thirty male voices and thirty female voices reading isolated words. And these sixty

voices represent a geographical areas west of the Mississippi River. Now, one of the things that stood out is that the California folks, the participants had a really strong preference for female voices that pronounced the the oo vowel, the double o vowel sound from a word like goose further forward in the mouth, as opposed to the um sound that someone in Fargo, North Dakota might make when saying gorse. In that case, the word is originating deeper back in

the mouth. Yeah, this was This was fascinating because on one hand, you have to sort of realize that at the end of the day when you're when you're thinking about what's attracted and what's not attractive and another human being. Uh, You're you're getting down to are these people I want to spend time with? Or in the in the case of potential mate, is this someone I want to to

spend an examinant amount of time with? And uh and and so you're going to want somebody or you're gonna want people that you have things in common with, that you share some sort of sense of community. Uh. And then this, you know, this goes back through thousands and thousands of years of human history. You know, you want people need to belong They need to belong to a group in order to survive. There's a survival advantage in

being able to to to sync with those around you. Yeah, and I think that it's it's interesting that that is more powerful than this sort of veiled idea that breathy voice, husky voice is going to deliver on on sex um essentially as what we're thinking, right we're thinking about marily Monroe or Barry White. Um, and that it really does.

The sense of community trumps that promise, that suggestion. And the only thing that kind of gets in the way of this idea of community and familiarity is the foreign language paradox. Yes. And I kept thinking about this myself when I was reading a lot of this initial stuff, because I was thinking, Okay, what are the voices that I would say, I, you know, objectively find uh attractive. I would say that like a like in male voices, like a British accent, and in and in among the ladies,

a German accent. Really, yeah, like the German accent. I don't know, there's something like strong and commanding about a German accent. Anyway, Well that's the said even real German, I don't. Yeah, that's rapid, my friend. Well but it did. I know, you didn't put your heart into it whole and far. See Okay, but you're that's okay, So that's not a good example. But um, but still are you running it for me? But see, so that's what I

would say if someone had asked me. But of course, in reality, I did not marry anyone with a with a German accent or a British accent and uh and and so I end up sort of defaulting to the argument that you end up mirring someone who are choosing a partner. It sounds more like you somebody who is uh in my case, someone who was raised in the South but has like less of the Southern accent. Uh.

My Michigan people to your right. Now, I wasn't raised in the South, okay, but I have been here long enough that I've taken on the twang, that's for sure. Professor Babbel again, she says that once you're outside of a certain range of familiarity, novel and exotic sounding voices might become more attractive. She says, we all have to keep in mind that we find some accents more preferable than others because of social stereotypes that are associated with them.

And I thought, you know what, I think she's right. I'm kind of a sucker for that, because I'm a sucker for a British accent, because I think that it it, you know, is endowed with a bunch of different things for me, like worldliness and wit. Now, of course, both of us when we're talking about British accents. We're probably

talking about very specific British accents. We're thinking thinking more about like Ben king Lee and like Tom Hudleston, that kind of accent, rather than like a strong Birmingham, England. And I'm not thinking Cockney and I'm not thinking Downton

Abbey either. That the Cockney accent is kind of sexy in its own right, you know, I suppose it can be yes, but again, the the idea that of an exotic voice is a void, and it's a voice that is uh, that is new, it's novel and maybe a little dangerous, and that does appeal to the novelty seeking

aspects of an individual. You know, we want new experiences, we want new ideas, and we've we've podcasted on this before, so you could definitely see where you would gravitate towards individuals with those qualities, and you're projecting your fantasies onto that, right and and it's kind of so we end up seeing the situation where there's there the voices that sound like our own, and those are cherished, and then there's the voices far away that sound nothing like our own,

and those are cherished. It's that gulf in between that just turns us off, you know, like they're saying they're they're there, their vowe, their vowels are coming out just a little weird, and I don't like it. It's the other, right, it's a and we always have a fear of the other. So it's interesting to see it played out like that. All right. So that's pretty much an overview of your

Barry White, your mail women rose out there. Also, I have a video on this topic, and in it, I'm going to reveal the real reason why Marilyn Monroe spoke like a di ide then and revoiced gal. Interesting. Yeah, I can't reveal it here. You gotta go to uh YouTube mind stuff show. Check out also stuff to Alow your mind dot com that of course is the mothership. You'll find links out to all of our stuff. There. You'll find links to our Facebook, our Twitter, our tumbler page,

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