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Masculine-sounding lawyers win fewer cases

This surprising finding, which seems to contradict the way that most court room drama movies pan out, has come from a new piece of research. The finding also runs counter to other sociological research which suggests that men are more likely to vote for men with deeper, masculine voices; whilst both men and women seem to prefer women with a more masculine tone as leaders. Such research is centered around the study of linguistics, the scientific study of language. Linguistics looks at language form, language meaning, and language in context.

For the new study, Alan Yu of the University of Chicago and Daniel Chen of ETH Zurich in Switzerland gathered multiple recordings of male lawyers in the U.S. Supreme Court. From the recordings, they analyzed the making the traditional opening statement: “Mister Chief Justice, may it please the court”.

The recordings, of sixty lawyers in total, were played to 200 volunteer subjects. Each subject was asked to rate the lawyer. Points were awarded for:

How masculine the speaker appeared.
How attractive the speaker could be.
How confident the speaker might be.
How intelligent the lawyer might be.
How trustworthy they thought he was.
How educated the man appeared from his voice.

In this sense, the volunteers were acting like a jury.

Taking into account factors like age and experience of the lawyers, the data review revealed that one of the traits overrode all others in predicting the court outcome: those male lawyers who spoke with a less-masculine voices were more likely to win.

Convinced? Is there a real bias in the legal system? Should lawyers attempt to alter their voices to win a case? Please use the comments section below.

The research is to be presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Portland, Oregon this month.

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Written By

Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

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