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Gabriel Yong Ping Chua, Hui Jun Er, Shao Yi Liaw and Tai-Sen He
 
''Pitch Right: The Effect of Vocal Pitch on Risk Aversion''
( 2020, Vol. 40 No.4 )
 
 
During interpersonal interactions, individual perceptions and judgment are unavoidably influenced by speech cues, such as vocal pitch. This paper experimentally examines the effect of vocal pitch on risk attitudes. In a lottery-choice task, subjects made a series of binary choices between a 50–50 lottery and a sure outcome option and were asked to listen to a voice recording verbalizing the payoff information of these options. We manipulated the vocal pitch of the voice recordings and administered three treatment conditions: control, low-pitch, and high-pitch. We found that a higher-pitched voice increased risk aversion, while a lower-pitched voice raised risk tolerance. As a relatively small sample size was employed, the results should be considered preliminary; future replications are indeed necessary to confirm the robustness and generalizability of the findings.
 
 
Keywords: Vocal pitch, Risk aversion, Laboratory experiment
JEL: C9 - Design of Experiments: General
D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty: General
 
Manuscript Received : Jul 26 2020 Manuscript Accepted : Nov 30 2020

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