Vocal fry may undermine the success of young women in the labor market

Vocal fry is speech that is low pitched and creaky sounding, and is increasingly common among young American females. Some argue that vocal fry enhances speaker labor market perceptions while others argue that vocal fry is perceived negatively and can damage job prospects. In a large national sample...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-05, Vol.9 (5), p.e97506-e97506
Main Authors: Anderson, Rindy C, Klofstad, Casey A, Mayew, William J, Venkatachalam, Mohan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adults
Biology
Biology and Life Sciences
Employment - methods
Employment - trends
Female
Females
Femininity
Humans
Labor
Labor market
Leadership
Males
Markets
Medicine and Health Sciences
Perceptions
Professionals
Sex discrimination
Social Sciences
Sound Spectrography
Speaking
Speech
Speech - physiology
Speech Acoustics
Speech Production Measurement
Statistics
Success
Trustworthiness
United States
Verbal Behavior - physiology
Voice Quality - physiology
Women
Young adults
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Summary:Vocal fry is speech that is low pitched and creaky sounding, and is increasingly common among young American females. Some argue that vocal fry enhances speaker labor market perceptions while others argue that vocal fry is perceived negatively and can damage job prospects. In a large national sample of American adults we find that vocal fry is interpreted negatively. Relative to a normal speaking voice, young adult female voices exhibiting vocal fry are perceived as less competent, less educated, less trustworthy, less attractive, and less hirable. The negative perceptions of vocal fry are stronger for female voices relative to male voices. These results suggest that young American females should avoid using vocal fry speech in order to maximize labor market opportunities.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0097506