elizabeth holmes accidentally uses real voice

‘Real Voice’: Listen to the Differencesĭid Elizabeth Holmes Fake Her Deep Voice? Did Elizabeth Holmes fake a deep voice to sound more authoritative? Holmes was the wunderkind behind Theranos, a company once hailed as innovative for its breakthrough technology that claimed it could perform hundreds of lab tests using only a couple drops of blood. Here’s a video that compares and contrast various versions of Holmes’ voice:Įlizabeth Holmes’ ‘Fake Voice’ vs. You can see her rendition of Holmes’ voice below. To Inside Edition, one of Holmes’ former professors at Stanford, Phyllis Gardner, remembered the young woman’s voice as much higher than what it is today. They do sound more likely to be someone who’s in a position of power.” O’Connor continued, “Some of the research we’ve worked on shows that when men and women deliberately lower their voices, it’s actually successful. To The Cut, Jillian O’Connor, an assistant professor at Columbia who studies the relationship between voice and perception, said, “This whole situation, the image manipulation, dressing like Steve Jobs, trying to sound a particular way - it sounds like an awful lot went into facade.” In Holmes’ case in particular, the confusion is over what Holmes’ intent might have been, if she was in fact faking her voice, and how much effort went into this apparent effort. Of course, the sheer fact of a woman having a deep voice is not what’s up to debate here, though many have pointed out the hypocrisy of women being insulted for vocal fry, and women also being insulted for having low voices. Reportedly, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of embattled firm Theranos, fakes a deep voice to project dominance.Elizabeth Holmes “fake voice” has been one of much discussion, with former colleagues and professors of the Theranos founder claiming her deep, rough voice is not her real one. Why? According to a BBC report on the study, “the researchers speculated that the transformation reflects the rise of women to more prominent roles in society, leading them to adopt a deeper tone to project authority and dominance in the workplace.” The BBC also noted that Margaret Thatcher used a speech coach to help her lower the pitch of her speaking voice to project greater dominance and authority.

The researchers did postulate that a deeper voice is also advantageous for female leaders and voice pitch differences between males and females may be part of the reason females are under-represented in the CEO ranks and when they are CEOs they tend to run smaller companies.Ī study out of Australia found that since the 1940s women’s voice pitch has deepened. The Duke/UCSD study did not examine voices of female CEOs due to lack of sufficient female CEO voice data. How about voice pitch for females? From an evolutionary mating perspective, a higher pitched voice is advantageous for females because it signals agreeableness. Thus, merely lowering one’s voice may not cause greater career success. It could be that men with deeper voices are in fact more dominant due to hormones or physical size. Note, however, that the study found a correlation, not causation. Their main finding was that “ deep voiced males oversee larger firms, in turn receiving more compensation, and are retained longer.“ In a fascinating study, researchers from Duke and UCSD studied the voice pitches of male CEOs of public companies on earnings calls. Studies have found that males with deeper voices mate more frequently, father more children, seem more attractive to females and are overall perceived as more dominant physically as well as socially. the average male’s 125 Hz)ĭoes the pitch of your voice have an affect on career success? It might.įor males, having a deep sounding voice confers an advantage. James Earl Jones has a super low voice (about 85 Hz vs.

Elizabeth holmes accidentally uses real voice