Do you cringe when you hear the sound of your own voice? You’re not alone. Most people hate it – and there’s a scientific reason why.
Whether it’s singing in a concert video or listening back to a voice note, an audiologist has explained the reason behind the phenomenon.
Why we hate the sound of our voice
When someone hates the sound of their own voice, this is called voice confrontation. It’s characterised by disappointment due to differences between what a person expects their voice to sound like to other people and what they actually hear.
Audiologist Ashish Shah said it all comes down to the way that sound is transferred to our ears.
“When we speak, the sound of our voice is transferred to our ears in two ways, externally by air conduction, and internally through our bones,” he explained. “The bone conduction transfers lower frequencies that air-conducted sound does not, and is what gives our voices the lower tone we are used to.”
He explained that when we speak to someone else, they are only hearing our voice through air-conducted sound, which means they hear us in a higher frequency. The same thing happens when we listen to our own voice on a recording. “We do not have the bone-conducted sound to add the lower frequencies, so we hear ourselves in a way that we are not used to hearing,” Shah continued. “And this is why we often find people saying they dislike the sound of their voice when they hear it played back to them.”
Our voice is a huge part of our identity, so when we realise that we don’t sound the way we think we do, it can really upset us.
We don’t really hate our voice at all
However, a 2013 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that we don’t actually hate the sound of our own voice at all.
80 men and women were asked to rate the attractiveness of a variety of different voices which they heard in recordings.
They were not told that their own recorded voices were included in the presentation, and the results showed that the participants rated their own voices as more attractive than others.
Ultimately, no one really cares what your voice sounds like, so you shouldn’t let it get you down.
“Generally, we don’t analyse the voices of others, so you can almost guarantee that people are not analysing yours,” Shah added.
“The judgement we pass on the sound of our voice is wholly based on it not being what we know or expect of ourselves and therefore it makes us uncomfortable, but the reality is, this is the only way others know us.”
Ashish Shah is a certified Audiologist who currently works at The Hearing Care Partnership, a UK-based hearing clinic. He received his Audiology BSc from the University of Manchester and has previously worked for the NHS.
