A Person's Sound Is Related to Height

According to a study from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a person's relative height can be determined by the sound of their voice.

According to a study from researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, a person's relative height can be determined by the sound of their voice, notably from their lower airways.

By analyzing data from of an archive of recorded voices and sounds produced from the lower airways of the same subjects, researchers were able to see how the sound of someone's voice affected the perceived image of how tall the person speaking might be.

24 study subjects listened to two recordings and rated which voice they thought belonged to a taller or shorter person.

Then in a related study from the same researchers, subjects ranked how tall they thought each of five people were based on the sound of their voices.

The results of the study show that subjects could choose the correct relative height of a person based on the subtle changes in the character of sound produced by the lower airways called subglottal resonances.

Subjects reportedly averaged a 62 point 7 percent accuracy rate in guessing the speaker's height.

What do you think? Does a person's voice really help us figure out how tall they are?