Thread by @GidMK

Men* with deep voices more likely** to be unfaithful***, research**** claims

*Chinese university students
**p=0.018
***to score higher on a self-report tool rating attitudes towards infidelity (r² = 0.22)
****single correlational study, n=234

FIXED IT

Study is here: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Honestly, this is a hilarious example of somewhat meaningless research being touted far and wide in the media

The scientists very simply measured vocal tone and pitch in a group of university students recruited through an app, and then asked the students to fill out a few questionnaires on their attitudes towards cheating

They found that, in men, some of the measurements of the pitch of people's voices correlated with their attitudes towards infidelity

So lower voices felt more comfortable with infidelity than higher voices in men (but not women)

Now, you could argue that this is a totally meaningless result on its face, especially because the rating scales used in the study towards infidelity attitudes don't actually correlate well with cheating

The correlation was also very weak, and if you look at the graphs it appears to be another case of drawing lines on a graph that may or may not mean very much

On top of this, the researchers ran dozens of statistical comparisons in this study without correcting for multiple comparisons, so it's hard to say whether the few positive results that were observed actually mean anything

Moreover, I can't find a pre-registration up anywhere, which is also a bad sign for a psychology paper

There's also this wonderful paragraph in the text - pro tip is to never use the term "marginally significant" (also they appear to be using a p-value cutoff of 0.1 for 'significance' which is, uh, not commonplace)

Anyway, I don't think you can take much away from this study except that deep-voiced Chinese male students find infidelity slightly more attractive than higher-voiced ones

What to make of that? Hard to say