Psych-Out

Your voice is your music. It has tone. Rhythm. Tempo. Pitch. It swings high. It swells deep. You soften it. Shrill it. Lilt it. Bark it. It’s hoarse. Breathy. It’s a lullaby. A Chopin Nocturne. Gangsta rap. It croons. Screeches. Chirps. Grunts. Eavesdrop on lovers newly in love. It’s not what they say, but how their tones caress the ears. Lovers coo like morning doves. If their love dries, their tones no longer soothe but strike in abrupt screeches and barks.

Nalini Ambady (1) found that we can accurately guess if a surgeon has been sued having no other information than hearing the tone in his voice. Marital researcher John Gottman can predict the prospects of a couple’s marriage after hearing but a few seconds of their conversation. If contempt rings in their tones, lawyers may be soon hawking their skies. (2)

Recent research has suggested our sensory-emotional system responds 70% to voice tone, 20% to body language, and 10% to the actual words spoken. (3) You want to be a dazzling flirt? Vary the pitch, rhythm and tone in your voice. You’ll create quivers of pleasure in the listener’s ear.

Speech is patterned sound. Patterned sound is music. Both music and human speech strike deep limbic (emotional-response) structures in our brain. Far more than the actual words spoken, the musical intonations in our voices help us and others identify crucial information about the emotional temperature of you and me. Angry. Distressed. Lusty. Threatening. Yearning.

All mammalian sounds are blends of growls, barks, and whines. These sounds hold crucial emotional signals for survival, mating (4) and just getting along. Think of how you and your pooch get your messages across. Babies sing their contentment or distress long before they can utter a first word. Human speech broke free through our evolved capacity to intricately shape these basic sounds.

Both speech and music show hemispheric dominance. In non-musicians(5), the right brain is dominant for the appreciation of melody and harmony. This hemisphere also plays a role in the musical as well as emotional properties of speech, itself. Damage to the right temporal-lobe language areas can cause a condition called aprosodia. (6) These patients speak in flat, monotone voices and miss the “feeling” content in conversation. Try to imagine speech without its musical intonations.

Musical tones can activate the brain’s pleasure/reward centers by increasing the release of dopamine. The same can be said of a lover’s cooing. Dr. Pietro A Modesti found that people with high blood pressure who listened to classical, Celtic or Indian (raga) music for one month for 30 minutes a day had significant reductions in their systolic blood pressure.(7) When trying to soothe the distress of someone you love, instinctively your voice will soften and thrum.

Yet, as sweet, cooing sounds stimulate our pleasure/reward centers, harsh discordant sounds awaken signals of distress. Once awakened, fight or flight takes hold. Think of your last argument. At some point, the actual words spoken lost all meaning. Your duet disintegrated into a discordant battle of tone against tone. Next time you want to get a point across, think of your voice as your music. Does it strike like a screech or battle cry? Or, does it sing in soothing, inviting tones?

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1) Ambady, Nalini et al. “Surgeons’ Tone of Voice: a Clue to Malpractice History,” Surgery 132, no. 1 (2002): 5-9.
2) Gladwell, Malcom. Blink. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2005.
3) I have yet to find the actual research that suggests this finding. I have years of anecdotal evidence from my clinical practice that confirms its basic truth.
4) Darwin, in The Descent of Man wrote, “I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex. Thus musical tones became firmly associated with some of the strongest passions an animal is capable or feeling, and are consequently used instinctively…”
5) Dr. Jeanette Norden, professor of Neuroscience at Vanderbilt, suggests that in musicians, the loss of musical ability may occur from damage to “language” areas in the brain (Wernicke’s area 22)
6) From Greek a- without + prosoidia a song set to music, from pros toward + oide song + ia indicating a condition or quality. This condition is sometimes linked to amusia, where such individuals show a loss of the ability to recognize musical tones or rhythms.
7) “Music can reduce blood pressure depending on tempo.” Medscape Today and WebMD.