Video Shorts: Embodied cognition and the voice–your voice can trigger emotion
Video Shorts: Embodied Cognition Theory and a Lower Pitch of Voice
Your Voice can Trigger Emotion
This short video explains how to use your voice to trigger positive feelings of power and improve the way you’re perceived.
Approximate Video Transcript
Back to this Embodied Cognition theory, studies have shown that using the lower pitch of your voice helps you to feel more powerful.
In one study, they gave participants a panel of text to read. Some participants read it in a higher pitch voice than usual, and others in a lower pitch voice. Then they were asked to self-report how they felt and completed abstract thinking tests. They found that the people who read the text in a lower pitch voice than usual self-reported feeling more powerful and performed better in abstract thinking tests.
If we try and figure out what's happening here, we can do so by answering the question, "What happens to our vocal pitch when we feel nervous?" Does it go up, or does it go down? It goes up. Sometimes it goes so high it cracks. I don't know if you've experienced that, but I certainly have.
What's happening here is nervousness; one physiological change in the fear responses is that the vocal cords tighten. The voice (we speak on the out-breath) has to squeeze through the vocal cords and comes out at a higher pitch. We're feeding back to the brain that we are nervous.
If you're aware of this, you can break the cycle by engaging a lower pitch. Stay within your natural vocal range, or it will sound ridiculous. Let's say this is your vocal range, with highs here and lows here. Usually, we don't use most of the available tones; we use a small portion in the middle. We go up and down, in between; that's good, it's vocal variety, otherwise, we would be very narrow in speech, which is monotone and isn't engaging.
Push the vocal range that you usually speak with to the lower end. Women, don't do this in your romantic lives or with your family; just use it as and when you need to at work. There's an easy way to tap into the lower tones–you can engage a low hum. You can pulse it, which sounds like this, hmm, hmm, hmm, or do a continuous hum.
When your pitch is higher, you should initially feel vibrations in this area (nose/mouth). Can you feel the vibrations in this area of your face?
Now, push it lower; push the hum down to make it deeper, so it resonates from your throat. Can you do that? When you get there, you should feel the vibrations resonating from here (throat).
Once you're there, take it even lower. We're not sure how this works, but bending your knees might help you to go lower. Get the hum to resonate from your chest. This doesn't only engage a lower pitch, but it also gives a more resonant-sounding voice, a warmer, well-rounded voice. People like voice actors use this, but most people don't know about it. Now you do.
We want the hum to resonate from your chest. If you do this within the moment, you will engage lower tones as you speak. If you do this over time, say every day for a minute or two, you'll increase your vocal range at the lower end, reaching lower tones more easily.
Once your hum resonates from the chest, stop and say, "does my voice sound deeper?" You should hear your voice sounds deeper. It will go back up, but maintaining it will help you feel powerful.
When do you do this? Before interviews, before you present, anything where you need to boost feelings of confidence.
On the other side, studies have shown that how we use our voice affects how people perceive us. They have found that people with lower-pitched voices sound more credible, serious and dependable.
One study looked at around 800 male CEOs and found that the CEOs with deeper voices managed larger companies with more assets and people. As a result, they were paid significantly more. There's no direct correlation between how deep your voice is and your paycheck, but these people are coming across as more credible, serious and dependable and are given positions of power.
