ArticleNature communications2021
Efficacy in deceptive vocal exaggeration of human body size.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Phylogenomic analysis of vocal fold length evolution reveals links between vocal and auditory systems in terrestrial mammals.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Formant analysis of vertebrate vocalizations: achievements, pitfalls, and promises.BMC biology · 2025Review
- Humans need auditory experience to produce typical volitional nonverbal vocalizations.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Comparing accuracy in voice-based assessments of biological speaker traits across speech types.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Resolving the bouba-kiki effect enigma by rooting iconic sound symbolism in physical properties of round and spiky objects.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Individual differences in vocal size exaggeration.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Vocal size exaggeration may have contributed to the origins of vocalic complexity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Static and dynamic formant scaling conveys body size and aggression.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Hearing the physical condition: The relationship between sexually dimorphic vocal traits and underlying physiology.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Predicting strength from aggressive vocalizations versus speech in African bushland and urban communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Singers show enhanced performance and neural representation of vocal imitation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Human voice pitch measures are robust across a variety of speech recordings: methodological and theoretical implications.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Harsh is large: nonlinear vocal phenomena lower voice pitch and exaggerate body size.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
How can deceptive communication signals exist in an evolutionarily stable signalling system? To resolve this age-old honest signalling paradox, researchers must first establish whether deception benefits deceivers. However, while vocal exaggeration is widespread in the animal kingdom and assumably adaptive, its effectiveness in biasing listeners has not been established. Here, we show that human listeners can detect deceptive vocal signals produced by vocalisers who volitionally shift their voice frequencies to exaggerate or attenuate their perceived size. Listeners can also judge the relative heights of cheaters, whose deceptive signals retain reliable acoustic cues to interindividual height. Importantly, although vocal deception biases listeners' absolute height judgments, listeners recalibrate their height assessments for vocalisers they correctly and concurrently identify as deceptive, particularly men judging men. Thus, while size exaggeration can fool listeners, benefiting the deceiver, its detection can reduce bias and mitigate costs for listeners, underscoring an unremitting arms-race between signallers and receivers in animal communication.
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