What sounds beautiful looks beautiful stereotype

Abstract

This study experimentally tested whether individuals have a tendency to associate attractive voices with attractive faces and, alternately, unattractive voices with unattractive faces. Participants viewed pairings of facial photographs of attractive and unattractive individuals and had listened to attractive and unattractive voice samples and were asked to indicate which facial picture they thought was more likely to be the speaker of the voice heard. Results showed that there was an overall tendency to associate attractive voices with attractive faces and unattractive voices with unattractive faces, suggesting that a “what-sounds-beautiful-looks-beautiful” stereotype exists. Interestingly, there was an even stronger propensity to pair unattractive voices to unattractive faces than for the attractive voice–face matching.