Self-Recognition Shapes Evaluations of (Self-) Voice Attractiveness

Hearing our own voice is commonly assumed to be an unpleasant experience. In contrast, some studies of voice perception have reported that we actually find our own voice to be more attractive than other voices. It remains however unclear whether previously observed enhancements of self-voice attractiveness were mediated by the recognition of the self-voice during the task, because recognition was never explicitly and rigorously examined in previous studies. We therefore conducted a voice attractiveness rating task under conditions that limited the likelihood of self-voice recognition, in order to directly compare the perceived attractiveness of one’s own voice when recognised versus when not. We found that both participants who did (N=59) and did not (N=80) recognise their own voice rated their own voice differently from other voices. However, crucially, the direction of this difference depended on whether the self-voice was recognised during the task or not: listeners who spontaneously recognised their voice rated it as more attractive than other voices, whereas listeners who did not recognise their voice rated it as less attractive. The findings help to explain one source of contradictory perspectives in the voice perception literature and beyond. highlighting the intricate interplay between self-perception, first impressions, and identity perception.