By Melissa Korn

How do you project success? For men, it takes a strong–but not angry–tone; a confident–but not arrogant– demeanor; and a commanding–but not intimidating–physical presence.
New research suggests it may also help to have a nice, deep bass.
Professors from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and University of California, San Diego’s Rady School of Management recently studied the vocal pitches of 792 male chief executives at publicly traded companies. They wanted to find out whether deep voices correlated with success, since prior research has shown that Barry White-like bass is often preferable when it comes to selecting a mate. A separate Duke study last year also found that voters favor political candidates with deeper voices.
The researchers in this latest study tracked the vocal “fundamental frequencies” of CEOs’ speech during earnings calls or investor presentations, then analyzed measures of their success, including compensation, company size and tenure in the corner office.
The median CEO, with a  125.5 Hz vocal frequency, earned $3.7 million, ran a $2.4 billion company and was 56 years old. You can listen to a variety of frequencies here. (For perspective, Duke researcher Bill Mayew says that James Earl Jones’s voice is around 85Hz, and Gilbert Gottfried’s tops 200Hz.)
Not bad, but researchers found that executives with voices on the deeper (that is, lower-frequency) end of the scale earned, on average, $187,000 more in pay and led companies with $440 million more in assets.
That benefit proved true even when controlling for a leader’s experience, education, dominant facial features and other variables that might sway decisions of recruiters and compensation committees.
A deep, smooth voice doesn’t necessarily guarantee a top corporate job, and the researchers are careful to note that they are just noting the correlation between the traits, not causation.
Mayew says he would like to assess the voices of women executives as well, but he says there aren’t enough for a statistically meaningful study quite yet. At last count, there were just 21 women CEOs in the Fortune 500.
The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of Evolution & Human Behavior.