Measuring the extent of voice pitch bias in voter behavior

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2482909 _(Table of Contents)

This thesis examines the extent of voice pitch bias on the electability of political candidates. In a survey experiment, undergraduate students listened to the manipulated voice recordings of both male and female candidates. These included different political statements to investigate any interactive impact of voice pitch and gender of the political candidates. I find that both from t-test and multivariate logistic regression analysis, candidates with the low voice, i.e. more masculine voices, increases their probability of winning an election, and also voters perceive the low voice candidates more trustworthy and competent compared to a high voice opponent. Manipulating the content of the political statements, I detect a disproportionate effect of voice pitch on male and female candidates’ probability of winning the election. Female candidates maintain the advantage obtained from having a low voice longer than a low voice male candidate. I observe this case where both male and female candidates are running opposed to a same-sex candidate with a high-pitched voice who advocates for a more desirable policy. However, female candidates lose this advantage at some point. Hence, there is a trade-off between voice pitch and the policy stance of the candidates. Besides, voters’ characteristics also have an impact on their probability of voting for the low voice candidates. Even though a female voter votes more for a low voice candidate than a male voter, this effect is not significant. However, I find that as the voter has more monthly household income, the more she votes for the low-pitched candidate