Does pitch make for an extraverted voice? Associations of voice pitch and extraversion in group interactions

Voice pitch is a salient acoustic cue that individuals use to make inferences about other’s personality. We examined how valid acoustic parameters such as mean fundamental frequency (i.e., voice pitch), variability in fundamental frequency and their dynamic changes function as indicators of dispositional extraversion in a naturalistic group discussion. We used audio data from a large-scale laboratory group study, in which unacquainted individuals interacted with each other (N = 448 with 5615 audio segments). Results suggest no compelling evidence that extraversion is associated with a lowered mean fundamental frequency (MF0), or dynamic changes in MF0 during a naturalistic interaction. If associations of extraversion with MF0 exist in naturalistic group settings, they are likely too small to be perceivable. However, in our group context, pitch variability was associated with extraversion and paralinguistic behaviour other than voice pitch, such as loudness, seems to be indicative of extraversion as well, suggesting that some paralinguistic variables may indeed signal a speaker’s levels of extraversion.