Why Don’t We Like The Sound Of Our Own Voice?

Listening to a recording of our own voice often arouses a feeling of shame or displeasure that is difficult to explain. In addition, this is accompanied by the certainty that what we hear has nothing to do with the actual sound of our voice.

Social networks and, in general, the new forms of communication of the current era have popularized recordings. This has made us start to hear our own voice frequently from the receiver side.

But, what is this feeling due to? Why is the voice heard so different in a recording? The answers come through two routes: the physical and the psychological. In this article you have the keys to understand how they work and interact with each other, so don’t miss out.

How do we listen to our own voice?

The first stop is to understand how the brain processes the sound of our voice. The feeling of unreality that appears when listening to a recording in which we are talking is in fact natural: it is not the same sound that the brain has classified as its own. This occurs because when speaking, sound waves arrive through two ways:

• External route : we hear ourselves like any other sound coming from the environment.
• Internal route : at the same time, those sound waves that come from the vocal cords reach the auditory system by reverberation through the skull. In other words, we also hear ourselves “from the inside”. These sound waves have a lower frequency, so they are heard in lower tones.

The cortical areas of auditory processing are in charge of processing and cataloging this sound. Therefore, the brain “averages” between the two pathways, with the result that the sound that it identifies as one’s own voice will be slightly lower than that heard from outside.

Relationship between sound and self-concept

The other explanation is psychological in nature. At the level of thought, the voice itself is one of the many facets that make up the self-concept. In other words, one’s own identity is not only based on concepts and opinions that one has about oneself, but also has a sensory component, from the image seen in the mirror to the sound of one’s own voice.

Obviously, when the mind finds something that is not in line with its own identity, it will automatically activate the mechanisms that safeguard the self-concept. For this reason, the first reaction to a voice that does not seem ours is to think “this is not how I sound”.

To this is added another factor, the social one: that other people corroborate that this is how one’s own voice sounds from the outside is one more addition to the feeling of strangeness. There are people who even dislike their voice because of this dissonance.

Voice notes in modern times

Clearly, since the advent of mobile devices and instant chats, hearing one’s own voice has become a much more frequent and everyday experience. This, as might be expected, has had an influence on the collective perception of one’s own voice.

To give you an idea of ​​how this perception has developed, here is a small chronology:

• In a study carried out in 1967, stimuli were presented to different subjects to check to what extent they were recognized in them. The results showed that only 38% of the volunteers were able to recognize their voice immediately.

• Later, in 2010, in another study that compared the speed of self-recognition by visual and auditory routes, it revealed that this percentage of people who recognized their own voice was 89-93%.
• Regarding the effect of displeasure in the face of the sound of our voice, in a study carried out in 2013 it was found that if the subject is not notified that he is going to hear his own voice, he evaluated it in a more favorable way than if he was warned before.

Knowing our voice and working with it transcends the opinion we may have about it. In areas such as music therapy, dramaturgy and even self-esteem, both the internal and external voice are worked on due to the impact it has on the very concept of the person’s identity.