Why Do We Cringe at the Sound of Our Own Voices
If you’ve ever heard your own voice on a tape and thought, ” Am I really saying that?” you’re not alone. Most of us at least cringe when we hear us say to others, and The Science of Us explains why and what it says about us.
First, the reason we sound different than when we hear ourselves on tape has to do with the physiology of our skull. When we hear our own voices, we hear them as if through an “additional” set of speakers – bone conduction. More specific:
This is called bone conduction. This means that when your vocal cords vibrate to produce speech, this movement also vibrates the bones of the skull, and this is also recorded in the cochlea. Bone conduction transmits lower frequencies than air conduction, so this is one of the reasons why your voice sounds so strange when played back to you. When you hear sound through your head, your brain perceives it as lower than it actually is, because the transmission through the skull made it sound that way.
So, unfortunately, when we hear our voices play back to us, that’s how everyone else hears us. Hurray, but why do we cringe at the unfamiliarity of our own voices?
But you can think of the shudder as the shock of self-awareness. Some psychologists and philosophers see the difference between experiencing a “living body” and a “bodily body” and argue that emotions that induce self-awareness cause them to collide.
… In other words: most of the time most of us live in our heads, imagining that the person we introduce to the world is really the person the world sees. Moments that cause affection pull us out of this fantasy, forcing us to look at ourselves from the sidelines at least for a short time.
The next time you remember what you did, it was so embarrassing that you just flinch or start talking to yourself to try and pave that thought in your head, well, that’s why. Science of Us goes on to explain that if you don’t cringe – or have no problem hearing your own voice at all – you may either have higher self-esteem than many of us, or you may be better at dealing with these multitudes – a promising approach to life, or maybe you’re just used to it.
The entire text is well worth reading and is filled with research and quotes on all of these phenomena. Follow the link below to check it all out.
What Does Cringing Your Own Dumb Voice Say About You | Science about us