You are how you speak: The roles of vocal pitch and semantic cues in shaping social perceptions.

This article investigates how vocal pitch and semantic cues in speech interact to influence social perceptions of speakers, specifically regarding warmth and competence, within a Chinese context. The study found that antisocial semantic cues negatively affected perceptions regardless of speaker gender, while prosocial cues did not significantly enhance positive evaluations compared to neutral cues. Female vocal pitch influenced warmth-related perceptions but not competence, whereas for male speakers, semantic context moderated the impact of pitch: higher-pitched men in prosocial contexts were perceived as warmer, and low-pitched men in antisocial contexts were seen as more competent. Overall, high vocal pitch was associated with greater warmth but lower competence, and low pitch with the opposite pattern, highlighting the complex role of vocal and semantic information in forming stereotypes based on voice.