Why do some people find certain accents attractive? Why do the inflections of our voice – the way that we speak – influence desirability in a positive manner? It is difficult to approach these questions, as preferences often vary; no one accent is universally pleasing after all. However, if I were to hypothesize:

H₁: Accents are good indicators of genetic disparity, appealing to our instinctual drive to diversify the gene pool.

As for the null hypothesis:

H₀: Accents and their appeal are in no way correlated to genetic predilection.

As I investigate the concept further, keep in mind that I’m delaying my research into the topic until after completion to avoid bias. That being said, I will now go into how my hypothesis could be explored.

Allure in relation to accents is almost impossible to test experimentally; a standardized, double blind placebo trial wouldn’t work, for obvious reasons; chemical manipulation wouldn’t yield the right results, or at least the results being sought. The only path to take would be through the organization of an observational study, which would not be too problematic to arrange.

We can at least remove reverse causality as a risk (people gain accents because they are more genetically desirable). So let’s start with what we know. Attraction encourages sexual intercourse. Accents contribute, in many cases, to attraction. We can assume the following: accents encourage sexual intercourse (second handedly). A study taking all of the above into account might resemble this:

An English-speaking group of 30 heterosexual men and 30 heterosexual women of differing nationalities are situated in individual rooms. Several sound clips of women/men (respectively) are played consecutively, with short pauses in between; the accents of the recorded women/men are: English, Irish, American, African, Russian, Spanish, Australian, and New Zealand accents (of course). The speakers will be proficient in English, but have inflections that reflect their origins.

On a sheet of paper, each subject will be tasked with rating his or her attraction to the speaker. Presumably, the subjects will rate their counterparts of similar nationality lower in attractiveness then those who speak in a foreign accent. If the data suggests this, we could assume that genetic diversity is a contributing factor, because foreigners are less likely to share certain traits.

By removing the visual aspect of attraction, the aural aspect can be studied more thoroughly; this reductionist approach eliminates the bias of physical attraction. And that’s that.

So I looked up why accents are attractive (after writing out all of the previous paragraphs) and found an interesting theory backed by a sociolinguist. According to this article, and Susan Tamari, accents are attractive based on the positive/negative associations formed with them. More on that can be found by clicking the link.

It would seem that social reasoning has eclipsed scientific reasoning in this instance. If the sociolinguist is correct, I have no choice but to reject the alternative hypothesis and accept the null. Still, it was a fun thought exercise. 

(no relevant picture could be found)