What is the reason behind disliking the sound of your own voice when you hear it in a recording?

zeebooraffe · 1 year

Most people seem to be taking this as why your voice sounds different in your head then in from a recording. I think the OP is actually asking if there is a reason they are scared into not talking at all after hearing a recording of their voice because it sounds so terrible, or whether they actually just have a terrible voice. Atleast that is what I took from it (that being a fear of mine as well).

Leothegiant · 1 year

I am no scientist and this is my first post ever on Reddit, that is how interested I am in the topic in my own life. I have been playing guitar for 13 years now and a few years back I decided to focus on singing to add a skill to my musicianship. I studied books, took lessons, practiced often, but one thing always stopped me. The sound of my voice was unacceptable to me but everyone else liked it. I began to really sit on why as I have always been a logical person and am very into psychology as well. I believe that as we become more conscious of our own selves we find ways to identify with our physical self, recognizing our face in the mirror, our hands in a picture, any unique properties, even how your own legs and feet look when you stare down at them. One's own voice is critical to personal identity, how we hear ourselves, the voice you have when you think. These are deeply rooted in personal identification and when you hear your voice on a recording you hear the other you. A you that you can partly identify to but that isn't quite right. in my example my voice sounds much deeper, fuller, and all around more awesome in my own head, I identify with it as it is "ME" to me. But the voice others hear is not ME, it is close but not what I know so well. A study that was on NPR a week ago talked about an experiment that involved participants listening to 10 people including themselves say hello in random order over a few minutes, they were asked to press a button when they heard their own voice, most could not accurately do it for long yet the sensors hooked up to them showed a physical response to their own voice whether or not they actaully recognized it. Basically I believe it is a very complex relationship with your personal identity. Imagine waking up with a different voice all together, or with different hands, or another face. Another quick example (if you have friends try this) have some immitate you as a person, your gestures, posture, whatever is unique about you to them. You will most certainly dissagree with whatever it is they do because you probably don't identify yourself the same way others identify you. Tell me what you guys think about all this good stuff, the topic is tantelizing.

sxbennett · 1 year

Yes, it is. When you read, listen, and/or speak, the key areas in the brain are Wernicke's area and Broca's area. Wernicke's area is responsible for processing auditory information, it's the "voice" in your head that reads out words to your brain, then Broca's area guides the motor cortex to physically move the lips, tongue, etc. to form words. This all happens very quickly, so when you hear yourself speak your perception of the actual sound made is distorted by your perception of Wernicke's area "speaking" to you. When you hear a recording of yourself, you only hear the physical sound waves you produced, so it sounds different. I hope that was clear enough, feel free to ask more questions.

EDIT: It's Wernicke's area that interprets information, but it's the angular gyrus that "speaks" it. Sorry, my memory failed me.

reon2-_ · 1 year

A big part of the reason why we have a tendency to dislike, fear, or even hate the sound of our own voices when we hear them in a recording is because they sound different.

In particular, there is less bass, which makes us sound more nasal, more whiney and less authoritative.

Roughly speaking, in audio engineering, having a "fuller" bass sound is considered more flattering.

Probably psychology is also involved, imagine how nervous you'd be if you'd never seen a photograph of yourself before, taken at a non-flattering moment.

takethesquid · 1 year

I beg to differ with most answers, as I already know my voice sounds different. I went past that shock many years ago.

But I still wonder, just like OP, why is it that my voice sounds awfully horrible when recorded. I don't even think "my voice is different" what I instantly think is that I hate that individual with all my might, I would instantly punch someone who spoke like that. Then the shocking realization that I hate myself. Followed by how can people withstand that horrible noise and not consider me THE most annoying thing in the universe.
Also my in head-voice is child like. The recorded one is really grave. So I fail to be convinced by the bass thing... but could be true for some.

I have my theories for the cause, but this is /r/askscience ffs, not laymen speculation central. May we be enlightened by our properly educated non speculating comrades

kroxywuff · 1 year

Please refrain from posting top-level comments containing speculation or anecdotes.

When answering a question please try to use sources to back up your answer.

As always, try to keep off-topic humor out and on-topic humor at a minimum.

Thank you.

neilpomerleau · 1 year

In terms of familiarity, it has a lot to do with the mere exposure effect. We tend to prefer that with which we are familiar. Ask people to choose between a photograph of themselves and its reflection, and they will tend to prefer the reflection. This is because we are more familiar with our mirror image. Friends and family, on the other hand, will prefer the unreflected image. Likewise, we're more familiar with the way our voice sounds internally rather than externally, whereas others would be likely to dislike the way we hear ourselves if somehow given the opportunity.

1 year

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Eridanus_Supervoid · 1 year

I'd say uncanny valley effect applies here. If it was unrecognizable to the point of being only symbolically familiar, you'd probably be ok with it. If it sounded exactly the way you sound in your head, you'd probably be ok with it. It's that it occupies a strange realm in-between, this, 'oh god, I know that's me, but...that's how I sound to OTHER people?!?!' that does it.

OlePharmD · 1 year

I wonder if this auditory disdain is parallel to tasting something unexpected. One time I drank what I thought was going to be my wine but was actually someone else's glass of water. I immediately spat it out on the ground because it tasted awful. Water is about as neutral as it gets, but my mind immediately rejected it. Has anyone experienced this before?

chamagass · 1 year

As an actor, I've understood all over my voice studies that it's the great difference between hearing your voice and hearing other's: in the first instance, you not only hear the vibrance of your voice coming out from your mouth, you also hear de vibrations that generate in your head and your chest, right from the inside (something you can't hear from others). Note that the mouth, the ears and the nose are literally connected by tubes. So, since the inner frequencies are lower and in a different perception, when you hear it recorded and played, you only hear the frequencies that travel through the air, but not the ones that, whenever you talk, you can percieve from inside. Thus, when you hear it recorded it doesn's sound like your "own voice" (this means, what you feel when you actually talk), you don't like it beacuse it doesn't has those deeper tones that can be heard from the inside. Or maybe not.

gleno · 1 year

Very interesting question, I've always wondered this; but more about image reflection. I have a follow up on topic, how would people react if they heard their voice played back to them without knowing it was them? Could be hard to stage, given that most people could probably recall what they were saying; but non the less interesting if the person would recognize their own voice even though it's so horribly distorted by the cranium.

scex · 1 year

Here is my anecdotal counter-point: I am actually pleasantly surprised when I hear a recording of my voice. I usually think it sounds better than the internal monologue.

Also, I'm not sure if this has already mentioned but sound recordings might not sound the same as hearing the actual voice in person. Particularly with phone messages and the like which tend to be very low in quality.

MUYkylo · 1 year

Broadcasting major here.

It's mostly due to the fact that you have cavities (sinuses) in your head that you "hear" air vibrate in. When you hear you're voice in a recording, you don't get that effect, because you aren't talking to get that air moving through your sinuses as well as into your ears.

sheeboo · 1 year

I imagine it may have something to do with an idea like Johari's Window; there is a part of ourselves (part of our way of being in the world) which we're completely blind to. Hearing ourselves the way others do is unsettling, perhaps, because it creates an awareness of the fact that we can never be sure of the way others see (hear?) us. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window

From the Wikipedia page: Charles Handy calls this concept the Johari House with four rooms. Room 1 is the part of ourselves that we see and others see. Room 2 is the aspects that others see but we are not aware of. Room 3 is the most mysterious room in that the unconscious or subconscious part of us is seen by neither ourselves nor others. Room 4 is our private space, which we know but keep from others

dentoneer · 1 year

We usually think our voices are deep until we listen to a recording of them. Deeper voices usually represent a larger quantity of testosterone in males, which translates into better reproductive fitness. Speaking in strictly evolutionary terms, realizing that your voice is not as deep as you thought when listening to it on a recording, is like finding out that your penis is an inch shorter when looking at it on video, which most males dislike. To understand why your voice sounds deeper in your head than it does on a recording all you have to do is cover your ears and speak. You should be able to hear yourself clearly, despite having your ears covered. This is the "voice inside your head" and it is reaching your hearing organs from the inside of head bypassing your ears. This inside voice goes through a liquid interphase that slows the sound waves, effectively deepening the sound. Just try saying something while underwater and you will realize that interphases thicker than air will slow sound waves deepening the pitch. The opposite occurs with Helium which is less dense than air.

lillesvin · 1 year

I gave my answer to "why does it sound different" here, but I can only guess on the "why do we dislike it". As I mentioned in the linked comment, our voices tend to sound more "whiny" when we listen to a recording of ourselves, and I think it's actually just that. It sounds different from what we've been thinking our voice sounded like for years and years, and that can be pretty startling. We can also get used to hearing our own voices recorded, which again tells me that it's simply the shock of realizing that we sound different from what we expected.

SeventhString · 1 year

The way I think of it is just because it is different from what we associate as ourselves. I think it would be similar to looking in a mirror and seeing something similar to ourselves but significantly different.

1 year

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