{"id":9594,"date":"2017-06-26T00:54:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T07:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=9594"},"modified":"2017-06-26T00:57:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T07:57:47","slug":"vocal-cues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=9594","title":{"rendered":"Vocal Cues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many animals, across different classes, have two distinct sounds that may be classified as <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">growls<\/span> or as <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">whines<\/span>, respectively.  The <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">growls<\/span> signal threat; the <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">whines<\/span> signal friendship or appeasement.<\/p> <p>The <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">bark<\/span> of a dog is actually a combination of a <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">growl<\/span> with a <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">whine<\/span>; it is thus not a pure signal of aggression, as many take it to be; it is literally a <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">mixed signal<\/span>, perhaps indicating confusion on the part of the dog, perhaps signalling both that the dog is prepared to fight and that the dog would consider a peaceful interaction.<\/p> <p>When women talk with men whom they find attractive, women tend to raise the pitches of their voices.  Men tend to do something different when talking with women whom they find attractive; they mix deeper tones than they would normally use with higher tones than they would normally use.  The deep tones are signals of <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">masculinity<\/span>, of being able to do what men are expected to do.  The higher tones of men carry much the same significance as do the higher tones of women &mdash; with the additional point in contrast to the deep tones that the man does not mean to threaten the woman.<\/p> <p>It amused me to re&auml;lize consciously that this behavior by men is at least <em>something<\/em> like <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">barking<\/span>.  Then I grimly considered that <em>some<\/em> men <em>are<\/em> actually <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">barking<\/span>, telling the woman that he can be nice to her <em>if<\/em> she is nice to him, but will actively make things unpleasant if she is not.  But at least it should typically be possible to disambiguate the threatening behavior, based upon where the low notes are used, and of course the choice of words.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many animals, across different classes, have two distinct sounds that may be classified as growls or as whines, respectively. The growls signal threat; the whines signal friendship or appeasement. The bark of a dog is actually a combination of a growl with a whine; it is thus not a pure signal of aggression, as many [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,720,4,100],"tags":[1492,130,1493,1495,1244,1494],"class_list":["post-9594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-epistemology","category-public","category-sexology","tag-barks","tag-gender","tag-growls","tag-masculinity","tag-signal","tag-whines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}