How we use a ‘phone voice’ to sound smarter

If you have ever found yourself using a special ‘phone voice’, then you are not the only one.

for two out of five people admit they switch to a different voice when talking on the phone because they think it makes them sound smarter, a study found.

Two-thirds of them even use an affected voice when they are speaking to their spouses or family.

And women are more likely to adjust their voice in order to impress, with almost half of women doing so during phone calls, compared with just over a third of men.

However, a quarter of phone voice users said they do not realise when they are doing it, and over a third fail to keep it up for a whole conversation – with the mask tending to slip after 90 seconds of talking.

The dictionary defines a phone voice as one ‘intended to be particularly clear, engaging or businesslike, or one which is regarded as affectedly cultivated or pretentious’.

Usually designed to disguise the speaker’s class background, phone voices are used by workers on clients, suppliers and their boss, the report by insurance company Privilege said. They are often adopted by people dis- cussing loans and overdrafts with their bank, and nearly a third of phone voice users say they also use a different tone to try to impress restaurant staff when they call to reserve a table.

The use of phone voices also undermines the notion that younger people are less class conscious than their elders, the survey of more than 2,000 carried out by Opinium found.

for while six out of ten under-35s put on a voice on the phone, among the over-55s this falls to just over two in ten.

The survey also indicated that high numbers of people who use a phone voice want to hide their accent. It found that nearly six out of ten Glaswegians have adopted a fake voice, and 36 per cent of those from Newcastle, Liverpool and Edinburgh.

In southern England, the most affected phone users are in Brighton, where 45 per cent put on a phone voice, ahead of 43 per cent in London and 42 per cent in Bristol.

Psychologist Dr Becky Spelman said people who use a phone voice are uneasy when they cannot see the person they are talking to.

She said a phone voice ‘ makes us feel more secure in an environment that we experience as disconcerting’, adding: ‘Many of us still make snap judgments about people on the basis of factors such as accent.’