If You’re a Cheater People Can Hear It In Your Voice, Says New Study

Cheaters, beware.

According to a new study titled “Your Cheatin’ Voice Will Tell on You: Detection of Past Infidelity From Voice,” it was discovered that cheaters basically have nowhere left to hide, because the sound of your voice is enough to give you away. 

Seriously — all you need to do is ask her how her day was, and she’ll immediately know that you hooked up with her best friend last year. 

Just kidding. It doesn’t work that way. But it might be enough to give her a hunch. 

In the study, which was published in the scientific journal Evolutionary Psychology, researchers Susan M. Hughes and Marissa Harrison had participants listen to voice recordings of 10 men and 10 women counting from one to 10, and then asked the participants to draw conclusions about each person from the recordings.

It was found that, without any other context and irrespective of the content, a lot of accurate information can be concluded about a person based solely on their voice, including their sex (obviously), race, social status, personality traits, and sometimes even their height, weight, and if their face is symmetrical or not…and if they’re cheaters or not.

“Voices relay important information pertaining to mating success and sexual behavior,” the researchers wrote in the study.

“Half of the speakers for each sex reported that they had sexual intercourse with a person outside of a previous or current, exclusive and committed relationship at some point in their lives (i.e., were ‘cheaters’), and the other half reported never cheating on their partners.

“We found that participants indeed rated the voices of those who had a history of cheating as more likely to cheat.”

Fascinating. This means that if you’ve cheated on someone before, odds are your new boo will pick up on that in your voice. Oh, man. Should have thought of that when you were cheating!

The researchers currently have no idea why we’re so good at reading voices, but I’m assuming it probably has something to do with subconscious vocal cues, kind of like micro expressions, and sheer intuition.

“Vocal cues such as clarity of articulation may have also contributed to perceptions of infidelity,” the researchers concluded. “For example, masculine males tend to display less clarity in their speech and show phonetic patterns indicative of masculinity, which in turn could be associated with infidelity threat.”

Hughes also hypothesizes that certain personality traits that are communicated through speech, such as extroversion, could totally signal potential infidelity, since extroverts are more likely to be cheaters.

“Extroverts show greater variation in fundamental frequency, greater voice quality, and fewer silent pauses … and high extroversion strongly predicts infidelity.” 

However, it goes without saying you should definitely take these findings with a huuuge grain of salt, because not all extroverts are cheaters, and more importantly, your voice isn’t going to give you away immediately. Obviously.

H/T: Washington Post