Say “Hello” and I’ll tell you how you are. The first syllables of a conversation are decisive when it comes to making a good impression on others, since this dialogue is enough to reveal whether we are dominant people or, on the contrary, trustworthy. This is affirmed by an investigation carried out by psychologists from the University of Lethbridge (Canada), according to which, the intonation of a simple greeting throws information about our personality and conditions the opinion that the listener forms about us. Previous studies had already shown the influence of visible and audible features on the image we project, where, for example, the color of our eyes, the width of our face and facial redness act as a guarantee of confidence.
To draw this conclusion, the team recorded the tone of voice of 64 students as they neutrally read a passage that included a telephone conversation. Subsequently, the word “hello” was extracted from the recordings and played before 320 students, with the aim of classifying the voices according to 10 personality traits, including the level of confidence, dominance, attractiveness and friendliness. Surprisingly, most of the voices elicited the same opinions from the listeners. Men who raised their voices and women who alternated were perceived as trustworthy . In contrast, men with a lower tone were classified as dominant, as was also the case for women with a higher average tone. The study also revealed that the feeling of trustworthiness emanates from the tone and fluency of the voice, elements that we can adjust, while the feeling of authority is linked to morphological features, such as the length of the vocal tract.
According to the authors of the work, the haste with which we form value judgments has an evolutionary sense , since deciding who to trust and who not to trust in a matter of seconds can be crucial for our survival.
