Men's voice pitch influences women's trusting behavior

Women tend to trust men with low-pitched voices as political leaders but trust men with high-pitched voices in mating scenarios. To elucidate the role of pitch in perceptions of trust, we used a one-decision variant of the trust game in which female participants were given the choice to trust males to divide the money, or to end the game, taking a smaller than equal sum. Male receivers were simulated using pitch-manipulated voice recordings. Women trusted raised pitch voices more than lowered pitch voices. These results suggest that although people with masculine voices are entrusted to lead our governments, people with masculine voices are not trusted to divide up financial resources equitably on a personal level.