Perception of Voice Attractiveness: Effects of Speaking Rate, Gender, and Age

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the speaker's speech rate level, listener's age, and gender on the listener's attractiveness evaluation of the speaker's voice. Methods: A total of 8 speaker voices (4 males and 4 females in their 20s-30s) were selected from the speech corpus provided by the National Institute of Korean Language. These voices were manipulated to be 0.8 times and 1.2 times their original speed, resulting in 24 voice files for attractiveness evaluation. Evaluators were recruited from different age groups: adolescents (14), young adults (16), and middle-aged adults (14). They were instructed to perceptually evaluate the attractiveness of the speaker's voice. In addition, speech data from evaluators were collected to measure their actual speech rates. Results: Evaluator age groups did not show significant differences in attractiveness scores. However, across all groups, the attractiveness ratings were consistently higher for normal speech rates. Middle-aged male evaluators reported a significant decrease in attractiveness for faster speech rates. The correlation between the actual speech rate of evaluators and speakers was significant only for slower speech rates, indicating that evaluators with faster speech rates, especially males, showed lower attractiveness. Conclusion: The listener's attractiveness evaluation may depend on the listener's gender and age according to the speaker's speaking rate, with middle-aged male listeners being particularly inclined to find fast speech rates unacceptable. This study underscores the significance of speech rate as an acoustic evaluation factor influencing listener attractiveness.