And by "on your voice," I don't mean "on what you say" - I literally mean on the fact that there are words coming out of your mouth. What you probably don't do is engage in vocal exercises - but you may want to start: A new study found that people judge your intelligence level based on your voice.
So if the voice in your head castigates the voice coming out of a recording device, it’s probably your inner critic overreacting – and you’re judging yourself a bit too harshly.When you're preparing for an important job interview, you probably update your resume, prepare your talking points, and find a conservative yet fashion forward outfit to wear. The researchers found that patients, across the board, tended to more negatively rate the quality of their recorded voice compared with the objective assessments of clinicians. They also had clinicians rate the voices. Instead, we’re simply more used to hearing ourselves sound a certain way.Ī study published in 2005 had patients with voice problems rate their own voices when presented with recordings of them. Suddenly you realize other people have been hearing something else all along.Įven though we may actually sound more like our recorded voice to others, I think the reason so many of us squirm upon hearing it is not that the recorded voice is necessarily worse than our perceived voice. Because your voice is unique and an important component of self-identity, this mismatch can be jarring. It really is a new voice – one that exposes a difference between your self-perception and reality. There’s a second reason hearing a recording of your voice can be so disconcerting.
The recorded voice, in comparison, can sound thinner and higher pitched, which many find cringeworthy. When you hear your own voice when you speak, it’s due to a blend of both external and internal conduction, and internal bone conduction appears to boost the lower frequencies.įor this reason, people generally perceive their voice as deeper and richer when they speak. While some of the sound is transmitted through air conduction, much of the sound is internally conducted directly through your skull bones. However, when you speak, the sound from your voice reaches the inner ear in a different way. These bones then transmit the sound vibrations to the cochlea, which stimulates nerve axons that send the auditory signal to the brain. When listening to a recording of your voice, the sound travels through the air and into your ears – what’s referred to as “ air conduction.” The sound energy vibrates the ear drum and small ear bones. The discomfort we have over hearing our voices in audio recordings is probably due to a mix of physiology and psychology.įor one, the sound from an audio recording is transmitted differently to your brain than the sound generated when you speak. Some become so unsettled they refuse outright to listen to the recording – much less go over the subtle changes I want to highlight.