Inferring speakers' physical attributes from their voices

Two experiments examined listeners' ability to make accurate inferences about speakers from the nonlinguistic content of their speech. In Experiment 1, naive listeners heard male and female speakers articulating two test sentences, and tried to select which of a pair of photographs depicted the speaker. On average they selected the correct photo 76.5% of the time. All performed at a level that was reliably better than chance. In Experiment II, judges heard the test sentences and estimated the speakers' age, height, and weight. A comparison group made the same estimates from photographs of the speakers. Although estimates made from photos are more accurate than those made from voice, for age and height the differences are quite small in magnitude-a little more than a year in age and less than a half inch in height. When judgments are pooled, estimates made from photos are not uniformly superior to those made from voices. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.