Our Voice is A Major Part of Our Identity
What happens if it changes, and why do we sound different on recordings?
Hiya!
As a kid, my two best friends and I recorded ourselves singing during a sleepover one time while entertaining dreams of growing up to become famous pop stars. But I’ll never forget hearing my voice on tape and how it temporarily shattered my reality. The voice on the tape didn’t sound like me at all!
No doubt you’ve also heard your voice on a recording at some point. Were you also surprised by how different you sound? It’s a bizarre moment when trying to search for familiarity within a voice that sounds like a stranger’s — even a little unnerving. But why is that?
Why Our Voice Sounds Different
Before we go too far down the self-identity rabbit hole, let’s figure out why our voice sounds different in our heads than on a recording. According to Scientific American, it’s because sound reaches our inner ears in two ways— both of which impact our perspective.
When we hear a sound from our environment, it travels through the air and into the auditory canals in our ears. The vibrations reach our eardrum and inner ear, then into a fluid-filled spiral called the cochlea.
The same process occurs when you speak, but the sound vibrations also travel from your vocal cords and other internal structures to your cochlea. This enhances the lower frequencies in your voice. The Scientific American article explains:
The voice you hear when you speak is the combination of sound carried along both paths. When you listen to a recording of yourself speaking, the bone-conducted pathway that you consider part of your “normal” voice is eliminated, and you hear only the air-conducted component in unfamiliar isolation.
So, the sound we identify as our voice is really the combination of two processes. While writing this, something just occurred to me. This means that no one else, alive or dead, can ever know what you sound like — the voice you most identify with — to yourself. You, alone, are, and forever will be, the only person to hear that voice.
Voice and Identity
If you think about it, our voices are pretty miraculous. They’re as unique as a fingerprint, at least… we think they are because of the numerous variables that contribute to what our voices sound like — such as hormone levels, mood, and differences in internal anatomical structure.
Though it’s difficult to know for sure, given there are almost 8 billion people, and so far, aside from recognition, no evolutionary grounds have been proposed to explain why we’d need unique voices.
Still, recognition purposes are as good a place to start as any, so researchers conducted studies to see just how good we are at identifying and remembering voices. Turns out, we’re pretty good at recognizing the voices of people we’re close to, such as friends and family members — but things change when strangers are involved.
Anyway, part of the reason we identify with our voice is that our emotions also play a huge role in how we sound. You know the tone someone’s voice takes when they become angry or anxious compared to when they feel happy or compassionate. So in a very real way, our voice is like a conductor of our emotions, subtly allowing us to communicate how we feel. (Whether intentionally or not.)
Similarly, how we speak contributes to our personality through our accents, vocabulary, and cadence or rhythm of our words. There’s a reason artists are told to “find their voice” even when their chosen skill is nonverbal, like painting. It’s because our voice is what we use to communicate our thoughts and emotions to the world. It’s how our internal world meets and interacts with the external world we share.
So, what happens when the sound of our voice changes?
New Voice Who Dis?
Given how intertwined our voice and self-identity are, imagine how it might feel to wake up and sound completely different. Or perhaps, you wish you could change your voice to be deeper or lighter.
Cerveau & Psycho, the French-language sister publication of Scientific American, interviewed a Paris-based ear, nose, and throat physician, phoniatrician and craniofacial surgeon named Jean Abitbol about his experiences with patients going through exactly that.
Scientific American published an edited version of the interview in their January/February 2022 edition of Mind magazine — the only online version I can find is via AppleNews. In it, Dr. Abitbol talks about some of his experiences witnessing the impact changes in people’s voices have on their relationships and self-image.
There are plenty of things that can result in our voice changing. Consider the voice of someone who’s a long-term heavy cigarette smoker, their voice is usually deeper, sometimes a little raspy. Viral infections that affect the vocal cords are another common reason, some of which result in a more permanent change than a stuffy nose.
But external causes aside, how often does someone want to change their voice when there’s nothing physically wrong with them? According to Dr. Abitbol, not very often.
“It’s rare that someone comes to me with such a request. And in 95 percent of cases, I send them to a psychologist because it’s a sign that they have a problem with themselves. […] In most cases, the desire to change one’s voice in a profound way betrays an underlying psychological problem.[…] In the end, what these people want to change is not their voice itself but the way they use it.”
He goes on to share some examples of people thinking their voice is the problem when really, their issue has nothing to do with how they sound. Often people want to sound more confident or persuasive, which can be learned and doesn’t require changing their voice.
Perspective Shift
I imagine it would be pretty trippy if something changed my voice or the voice of someone I know. What if your partner no longer sounded like the person you know? Would it impact how you feel about them? I’m sure you’re thinking it wouldn’t and you’re probably right, though Dr. Abitbol mentions scenarios where such cases result in divorce.
In everyday life, we don’t think about how important our voice is, or how much of who we are is reflected in it. Your voice encapsulates a part of you that goes beyond the physicality of our reality. When someone hears you speak or sing it doesn’t matter what you look like because it’s your voice that represents you. Now I can’t help but wonder what my voice says about me.
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