British research using voice samples from a television documentary series has found the male voice settles at a certain frequency much earlier than previously thought.
Psychologists at the University of Sussex carried out research that found the voice pitch of men was often determined by the age of seven, rather than at puberty.
Researchers examined vocal changes using interview footage from Seven Up!, the popular TV series which charted the lives of 14 children since they were aged seven in 1964.
Analysis was carried out on the voices of the 10 men who took part in the programme. The results show that individual differences in men's pitch remain remarkably stable throughout their lives.
The study, published in the Royal Society journal Open Science, found that, while vocal pitch did drop between seven and 21, the subjects' pitch at seven strongly predicted their voices at adult age.
Dr David Reby said: "These results show that individual differences in men's pitch remain stable throughout the lifetime and, in fact, emerge long before pubertal influences on the vocal anatomy.
"Ultimately, what this means is that pitch in males may be linked to androgen exposure early in life, possibly even in the womb."
Fellow Dr Kasia Pisanski added: "Research has shown that pitch affects people's judgments of attractiveness, masculinity, dominance, competence, and trustworthiness."
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