Women's conflict when choosing a partner

Most women are more likely to be fascinated by men with a deep voice, but when looking for a responsible husband, they put their faith in high-pitched men.

This fact is happening in a tribe in Africa called Hadza, in northern Tanzania. They live by hunting, gathering and barely interacting with the outside modern world. Being isolated from media, advertising, pop music and newsletters, they are the ideal subjects to study sexual instincts and trends in choosing a partner. That is the judgment of Coren Apicella, a doctor of anthropology at Harvard University (USA).

'Hadza's life is exactly the same as our ancestors' lives 200,000 years ago. Much of the psychological trend of humans began to evolve since our ancestors entered hunting and gathering , 'Coren said. She spent six months exploring the types of voices that men and women of the Hadza tribe liked. In a previous study, she and her colleagues found that men with low voice were better able to reproduce than men with high voices.

Hadza tribe.Photo: Coren Apicella.

In the new experiment, Coren and colleagues invited 88 Hadza men and women to participate. Experts ask a man and a woman to say 'hujambo' (hello) and then record it.The data is put into a computer software to adjust the volume to many levels. The voice has low to high pitch, women are asked to choose the male voice that they think belongs to a good husband, meanwhile, men are required to evaluate their ability to make wives and gatherers. female voice.

The men of the Hadza tribe believe that women are more vocal and more picky, but most prefer those with high voices. The majority of women believe that men with better male vocals are better at hunting, but only a few say they will be responsible husbands.

At the beginning of the data analysis, Coren found that about half of the women who participated in the experiment had raised their children. When dividing women by that criterion, she found a trend: Women who are breastfeeding believe men have high voices, while adults with older children prefer deep voices.

'When the Hadza women began breastfeeding, their time for gathering and cultivation decreased. It is a time when men are a source of food and other forms of material for them. Maybe a high-pitched male voice is a signal that a man has a sense of responsibility for family and society , 'Coren said.

The phenomenon of men with a low voice after puberty is still a mystery of creation, said David Puts, an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania. David argues that the Coren group's experiment is groundbreaking because previous studies only carried out within universities, with students being students. Therefore, their results are only true for Western cultures in modern times, not universal for all cultures.

However, David identified the bass as a signal of male domination rather than female charm. In addition, men also felt that their voices were different from women. A previous study found that, in everyday life, men are afraid to fight with their opponents with a low voice. However, men do not think that men with deep bass appeal in the eyes of women.