Randolph students make attractive presentation at national conference

Sandeep Poudyal ’16 and Lauren Mason ’16 stand with their poster at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in New York City. (photo courtesy of Sandeep Poudyal)

A Summer Research project conducted in the summer of 2014 recently gained attention from professionals at a national conference in New York City.

Sandeep Poudyal ’16, Lauren Mason ’16, and Dennis Goff, the Charles A. Dana Professor of Psychology, presented and fielded questions from other researchers about their project, “Pitch of Voice and Type of Pick-Up Line Both Affect Desirability,” at the Association for Psychological Science meeting in New York City May 22.

The ongoing project examines the evolutionary reasoning behind physical attraction, and so far, tests have focused on heterosexual females and the impact that pitch of voice has on their physical attraction to men. Also tested was the effectiveness of pick-up lines.

To find out which pitch of voice women find more attractive in men and which pick-up lines have the best chance of initiating a conversation or interest, 19 college-age women were asked to listen to nine pick-up lines read by a college-age male model and recorded in three different pitches.

Results showed that the women were more attracted to the deeper, lower-pitched voice than to the average or higher-pitched recordings. The experiment also revealed that direct pick-up lines—those which convey interest with sincerity and flattery—produced more interest in potential short and long-term relationships than flirtatious or innocuous (passive) ones.

Poudyal and Mason were honored to showcase their work in what is regarded as one of the most prestigious psychology conventions in the nation.

“Our poster was well-received, and students and faculty members from many colleges and universities stopped by to listen to what we had to say about our research,” he said. “A professor of psychology from another college stopped to listen to us and was very impressed with what we had done, since he had done similar research.”

“It was really good to hear them able to just talk naturally about the work they had done,” said Goff. “I thought they got some hard questions, and they handled them really well.”

The group has already started a third experiment in the series, which will involve testing preference for pitch of voice and pick-up line and how it is affected by conception risk in women. They also plan to enlist a larger, more diverse group of test subjects for future research.

“We have already started on this, and when the semester starts in the fall we will pick it up in full speed. We are very excited to see where this goes,” Poudyal said.