A tale as old as time – from the first floor of Revs to VIP concert boxes, loud music venues seem to be a cheater’s favourite place to hide. With an affair between tech company chief executives at a Coldplay concert in July going viral, the internet was united over the accidental kiss-cam reveal of an all-too-familiar story of deceit: 1 in 5 people in the UK have cheated on their partner, and of these, almost half are repeat offenders.

But if the past antics of your Hinge matches haven’t been broadcast on a massive screen for all the world to see, is there a way to weed out the unfaithful ones? Researchers from Albright College and Penn State Harrisburg (USA) have found that individuals can detect if a person has had a history of romantic infidelity just by listening to a brief voice recording.

There is evidence to suggest that various physical traits are correlated with certain vocal characteristics. The human voice has recently been used as a biomarker of health, as AI-driven ‘audiomics’ use vocal and respiratory sounds as digital diagnostic markers of respiratory conditions such as COVID-19 and tuberculosis. Medical technology aside, various studies show that humans are sensitive to speakers’ vocal cues which accurately predict their height, weight, social status, and even their personality traits.

“Lower-pitched voices elicited a higher ‘cheating likelihood’ rating from listeners”

The aforementioned researchers, Drs. Hughes and Harrison, focus on the last, and suggest that listeners tune into voice pitch to infer the speaker’s tendency to cheat. They took recordings of self-reported cheaters and non-cheaters, and played either the original or pitch-manipulated version (higher and lower) for volunteer listeners. Lower-pitched voices in both male and female speakers elicited a higher ‘cheating likelihood’ rating from listeners. Unfortunately for us, lower-pitched voices have also been shown to be perceived as more attractive. Indeed, having higher perceived ‘voice attractiveness’ has previously been correlated with an increased proclivity for infidelity.

So, do we instinctively pursue partners who are bad for us? Not necessarily – when the researchers matched speakers for voice attractiveness and pitch, listeners could still accurately discriminate cheaters from non-cheaters, suggesting that other unrelated vocal cues may be at play. Furthermore, this study is restricted in its sample demographic, being exclusively conducted with a heterosexual cohort, and only including ratings from white individuals in the data analysis – cultural notions of attractive masculine/feminine voices, and associated stereotyping of sexual behaviour or faithfulness may have skewed the results presented.

“We use voice to extrapolate a multitude of assumptions of character”

The study was unable to determine the exact vocal parameters which betray a cheater’s identity. The detailed vocal analysis required to approach a definitive conclusion lay outside of the study’s scope; individuals may have signalled their unfaithfulness through reduced clarity of speech, using fewer silent pauses, or through more masculine phonetic patterns, to name a few possibilities. Nevertheless, there is a wealth of data, in this study and others, to show that we do extrapolate these unspecified vocal cues into a multitude of assumptions of character.

The big question is: are these snap judgements of any real use to us? It’s true that there is something to be said for the ‘caveman brain’ – our trigger-happy bodyguard, designed to recognise and protect us from threats (in this case, illicit affairs). However, when the threat at hand is our own paranoia, rather than an actual cheater, maybe a more nuanced take is preferred.

All in all, whilst it’s possible that your crush has specifically chosen the thumping bass of Sunday Kiki’s to disguise their adulterous singing voice, it’s probably best not to jump to any conclusions, or at least listen to them talk your ear off in the smoking area first!