If you’ve ever listened to a recording of your own voice and felt shocked or horrified, there’s a scientific explanation for that reaction.
Although we hear ourselves when we speak, there’s something inherently unsettling about hearing our voice played back to us.
Many people cringe at the sound and often feel the need to apologize for their voice to others who are listening.
So, what’s the reason behind this uncomfortable sensation when hearing our recorded voice?
The explanation lies in the distinction between air conduction and bone conduction.
When speaking, we hear our voice through vibrations both in the tiny bones of the ears and skull, as well as through the air. However, when listening to a recording, we only perceive the sound conducted through the air.
The University of Tokyo notes that this is why recordings sound familiar but different from how we perceive our voice when we speak.
Bone conduction provides lower frequencies, while air conduction delivers higher frequencies. This difference creates an unexpected sound that many find unsettling.
Dr. Silke Paulmann, a psychologist at the University of Essex, explained to the Guardian: “I would speculate that the fact that we sound more high-pitched than what we think we should leads us to cringe as it doesn’t meet our internal expectations; our voice plays a massive role in forming our identity and I guess no one likes to realise that you’re not really who you think you are.”
Another perspective comes from a 1966 study by psychologists Phil Holzemann and Clyde Rousey, which suggests that hearing our voice on tape may reveal unintended qualities such as sadness or anxiety.
Marc Pell, a neuroscientist at McGill University, added: “When we hear our isolated voice which is disembodied from the rest of our behaviour, we may go through the automatic process of evaluating our own voice in the way we routinely do with other people’s voices.
“… I think we then compare our own impressions of the voice to how other people must evaluate us socially, leading many people to be upset or dissatisfied with the way they sound because the impressions formed do not fit with social traits they wish to project.”