Why your own voice playback is so weird?
Some people like to record their own songs, and then play them in a loop, but for others, listening to their own voices is like a nightmare. So what are they panicking?
This is actually a very interesting phenomenon, let’s talk about it.
I have a friend who hates listening to her own voice.
On one occasion I chatted with this friend on Whatsapp and talked about topics that were of interest to each other. The more I talked, the more excited I was, but as the topic got deeper and deeper, her response speed gradually became slower and slower. In the end, every time her reply is a bunch of words, I asked her: “So why don’t you just send a voice directly?”
She replied to me and said, “I would rather type a thousand words and don’t want to make a voice. It is too horrible to hear my own voice recording. It is just like eating shit.” In this way, I only recalled that we have known each other for nearly 10 years. It seems that we have never heard of the use of mobile social software to make voices. Even the phone can be exempted.
In order to understand what kind of mentality this is, I deliberately searched this question and found that it is not just my friend, a considerable number of netizens said that they hate to hear their voices.
” I felt my flesh crawl as I heard my voice “
” As soon as I hear it, I will turn it off immediately. It’s too hard to hear. “
” I always felt that my voice was low and magnetic until I heard my own recording…. “
“This is a fear that I can never overcome. I can’t wait to delete it as soon as I hear my voice. “
If you haven’t realized that the sound you hear is different from what others hear, you can try to prove this by recording a video on your phone. Record a self-talking video on your mobile phone, and you will feel that this is not your own voice. It is totally different from your own familiar voice. And when others hear it, the sound that comes out of the video is exactly your voice, basically the same. What is going on here?
Why is it particularly strange to listen to your own voice playback? Or why do you hear your own voice different from what others hear?
1. The speed of sound waves propagating in different media is very different, and the acoustic characteristics such as amplitude and energy attenuation of sound waves are also different.
For example, sound waves travel faster in solids and slower in energy decay (And the opposite is true in the air). Therefore, the sounds emitted from the same source sound differently through different channels of communication.
When we were speaking, the vibration of the vocal cord caused the vibration of the air, and the sound wave was transmitted to the ears of others, and others heard the sound. The sound of the vocal cord vibrations is also transmitted directly to the inner ear via the bone conduction and muscles of the head. Since the effect of solid sound is much better than gas, the sound that we hear is mainly transmitted through the skeletal muscles of the head. The sounds heard by others are mainly transmitted through the air. Therefore, it is not the same for others to listen to your voice and to listen to your own voice.
Now let’s do a small experiment, you will easily prove this.
Prepare a thin wire and a metal spoon. Use a thin wire to hang the spoon and use a knife to tap the spoon and you will hear the spoon sound crisp. Then, you pinch the ends of the thin line with your hands, press on both ears and cover your ears, and let the spoons float. Ask someone to strike the spoon. This time, you will hear the sound of the spoon sounds very sweet, which is very different from the previous one.
In addition, after we speak for ourselves, the longer wavelength sound is more easily transmitted to the inner ear through our body tissues and bones, or in other words, the bass is easier to pass through our body tissues to reach the ears, so we feel our “original” sound is thicker and richer than the voice in video, that is why we always feel lower and more “magnetic” when we listen to our own voice. But the cruel reality is that the sound we made is almost exactly the same as the video capture.
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2. Anticipatory Anxiety: Anxiety about Unfamiliar Things
In addition to listening to your own voice, there are still many people who are not willing to see their own photos in the camera, non-photographed life videos, etc.
” Who is this ugly guy? I am obviously a little fairy? ! “
This is because we look in the mirror every day and have become accustomed to the various features of the appearance reflected in the mirror – the bangs are leftward, there are a few nevi on the right cheek, and there is a small dimple on the left, etc…
When we see our photos, these characteristics are different from what we think in our brains. The resulting strangeness will unconsciously make ourselves feel resistant and anxious, even fear. (Of course, it may be because you think that the people in the photo are not as good as expected…).
This feeling comes from our love of familiar things and anxiety and rejection of strange things. When a strange thing appears, it is difficult for the brain to predict its unknown properties, resulting in a natural sense of resistance. That is psychologically expectant anxiety.
Similarly, we have become accustomed to the “own” voice that we usually hear, so that we will feel strange when we hear the real “own voice”. It is this feeling of resistance and anxiety to strange things that make us unconsciously hate our voice.
3. Self-service bias: How could such a weird voice be mine?
One of the most challenging and well-founded conclusions in the field of social psychology is the effectiveness of self-service bias:
We tend to self-perceived in ways that are good for ourselves, attributing good results to ourselves and attributing bad results to others.
Social psychologists Epley and Whitchurch did an experiment when they studied how self-service bias behaved in attraction, and the experiment presented a series of faces:
Option 1: The original face.
Option 2: A more attractive deformed face.
Option 3: A lower attractive deformed face.
The experiment found that people tend to define an attractive (more beautiful) face as their true look, rather than their original face.
Compared with the photos taken by others, do you also regard the processed self-portraits as your own real appearance? All the photos in Facebook must be sent out after the step-by-step beautification, for fear that others will find the difference?
↑↑ ↑↑ This shows that you are likely to have caught an attractive self-service bias.
By the same token, when you face two different sounds from your own, one is the lower, more layered and magnetic sound that I usually hear, and the other is the sound in the video. Most of the people will be more inclined to assume that the “good” sound is real, and the sound in the video is like a photo taken by a sneak shot, and it must be permanently deleted!
4. Focus effect: my strange voice will definitely lower the first impression of others on me
For some people, Voice message is just a communication tool, and it doesn’t matter if the voice sounds good or not. But for others, the voice represents a part of themselves (and is not a “good” part), it is unacceptable to present your less “good” side to others.
Some people may be surprised: “This is too exaggerated. Is it necessary to care about other people’s opinions?”
Then you may try to think back when something on your face, your clothes are worn, there is a hole in your socks, or you have something stuck on your trousers. Do you often can’t help but pay attention to the defects, and think that others must have noticed?
But in fact, others may not have noticed. This is the focus effect.
Focusing means that people tend to think of themselves as the center of everything and intuitively overestimate how much others care about themselves.
When we recorded our voice and sent it out, due to the focus effect, we will unconsciously predict others’ evaluation of their own voice.
” What does my voice sound like? Does he find it unpleasant? “
” The ending of this sentence is a bit stuck, it sounds weird. ”
” My voice is very turbid, not clear at all. Does anyone else think so? “
Some people even imagine whether the other party will listen to their own recordings repeatedly, even more, they are afraid that others will leave a bad impression on themselves because of this.
Don’t worry, don’t people care about it, OK?
5. Fear of accepting an objective and true self may be related to low self-esteem
Psychologist Bandura’s definition of “self-esteem” refers to a relatively stable, individual judgment of the overall self-worth evaluation. It is determined by many factors, including our role, the comparison we make, our social identity, how we perceive others’ evaluations of us, and the experiences of success and failure.
Everyone is eager to gain self-esteem, which is the driving force for our improvement, but self-esteem can sometimes cause us trouble.
When a person is in a low self-esteem state, it will have negative effects on emotions and cognition, such as: easy to produce shame, fear, feeling ugly, poor, stupid, stupid, afraid of failure, fear of others’ evaluation, etc.
To some extent, fear of hearing your own voice may be related to low self-esteem, and people with low self-esteem will be more acutely aware of what others expect of themselves, when they feel that they are being despised, rejected, or abandoned, they will feel that you lack charm, resulting in self-blame, giving up or avoiding behavior, and refusing to send voices to others again.
How to improve the situation that hates your own voice?
Get used to it:
The solution is very simple, just record your own voice and listen to the playback, and get used to it, you will eventually accept the true face of your voice. This psychological strategy is called pure contact effect by scientists, and the principle is based on people’s preference for familiar things.
For example, if you see an actor in the TV series and feel he is not very good-looking but has superb acting skills, as the story progresses, you may find out: “Oh, it seems that he is not so terrible-looking.” It makes the same sense.
Change the voice through professional training:
Everyone has their own innate voice and does not need to change it deliberately, but if you insist on improving it, you can also find a special sound clinic, speech coach, and drama actor to help develop a training plan. Through professional training, mastering a healthier, more efficient and excellent voice can also enhance your confidence and control over your own speech.
When you talk or sing, the vocal cords tremble and then pass the vibration through the vocal tract to the back of the throat. How the sound you make sounds depends on the state of each part of the process, including the shape and length of the channel, how the tongue is placed, the size of the lips, and so on. You can make your voice loud and clear by changing the vocal position, oral positivity, and breath training.
Correct brain bias:
The evaluation of others related to our self-concept is not how others actually evaluate us, but how others evaluate us in our imagination.
George Meade, Sociologist
In fact, most of the people who believe that their voices are unpleasant but the real voices are not really unpleasant, it just they imagine that others think their voices are unpleasant.
When you start to pay too much attention to the evaluation of others, any point of view of others becomes evidence of your self-doubt. So don’t do that, correct the prejudice in your own mind from now on, truly understand yourself, and really start to like yourself from inner.
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