The influence of voice pitch on perceptions of trustworthiness across social contexts

Article history: Initial receipt 30 March 2016 Final revision received 3 March 2017 Perceptions of trustworthiness are an important predictor of social outcomes, such asmonetary exchanges, criminal sentencing, and the attainment of leadership roles. Higher testosterone levels predict both lower voice pitch and untrustworthy behavior, across economic and mating contexts. Here, we tested the influence of voice pitch on perceptions of trustworthiness across general, economic, andmating-related (mate poaching, infidelity) contexts. We found that the context of trust and the sex of the speaker both changed how voice pitch affected perceived trustworthiness. Listeners were more trusting of higher-pitched female voices in economic and mate poaching contexts, but trusted lower-pitched female voices more in general. Listeners were more trusting of higher-pitchedmale voices in economic andmating-related contexts, and also tended to perceive higher-pitched male voices asmore trustworthy in general. Listeners' attributions of trustworthinesswere generally unrelated to perceptions of attractiveness from similarly-pitched voices, indicating that trust-related attributions were independent of preferences for higheror lower-pitched voices. Furthermore, perceptions of general trustworthiness were associated with perceptions of economic trust, but were not consistently associated with perceptions of mating-related trust. These findings provide evidence that voice pitch alone is sufficient to influence trust-related perceptions, and demonstrates that listeners use voice pitch as a cue to trustworthy behavior. © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.