Research Says People Judge Your Intelligence On Voice, Not Written Word

If there's a big interview on the horizon, start practicing your pitch instead of planning your wardrobe.

A set of experiments from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business showed recruiters perceive potential candidates as more intelligent when they hear their voices instead of see them on paper.

The study, published in Psychological Science, asked MBA candidates to submit written pitches and orally present the same pitches to potential employers who rated them on categories like perceived intellect and thoughtfulness.

Those given the chance to speak were clear frontrunners.

Study co-author Nicholas Epley told TIME the voice seems to impact a person in a way clothing cannot, explaining,

We think this speaks to a broader capacity to recognize that other people are human beings. And the capacity to recognize someone's mind, we think comes quite literally through their voice.

Surprisingly, Epley ties his research into another facet of the modern lifestyle: the Internet.

Simply put, we have difficulty understanding the person on the screen is a human like us when we can't hear his or her voice.

Epley says,

So much of our conversations and interactions with each other are done digitally with the voice stripped out. I don't think it's any accident that people online people seem to treat each other as mindless idiots.

Whether you're speaking to a potential employer or contacting a coworker, you might be better off using words instead of text.

Citations: People Judge Intelligence By The Sound Of Your Voice, Not Written Word (Medical Daily)