It seems as if every time I record my friends and I together, there is at least one person in the group who complains about their voice. Like me, most people I’ve met don’t like the sound of their voice. Not necessarily from talking out loud, but more so hearing it in an audio or video recording. Many people agree on this, but no one ever stops to think why so many of us aren’t too fond of our voice.

It’s a bit strange that you hear yourself talk all day, but think that a recording of your voice sounds “gross”. And of course, there is a legitimate reason as to why that is. According to Live Science’s interview with Dr. Yale Cohen, director of the Hearing Sciences Center at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, the voice you hear when you speak isn’t the same as the voice people around you hear.

A quick, little, science lesson was given by Dr. Cohen about how sound works with our ears. Three small bones called ossicles have a lot to do with the way people perceive their own voice. Ossicles are located in the middle region of the ear. When you hear noises, the eardrum vibrates against the ossicles, transmitting vibrations into the cochlea, or the spiral-shaped structure located within the inner ear. The vibrational energy created is then translated by the cochlea from the world around you “into electrical energy”. This process, known as transduction, is how brain cells are able to communicate with each other. When they do so, we are able to hear noises and understand what people are saying.

Processing information from the vibration of the ossicles is called bone conduction. There is also air conduction, which is processing information from vibrations of the air outside of the ears. Air and bone conduction both take place when you speak out loud. Because the mouth is close to the ears, the ossicles are vibrated more when you speak out loud. This so happens to mix up the sound of your actual voice. This would be the reason why hearing a recording of your voice often sounds higher pitched than what you hear when you speak out loud.

Surveys were handed out to phone interviewers at an organization called Gallup. Gallup is one of America’s top learning and education companies. They’ve been around for about 75 years now. The phone interviewers at Gallup call people nationwide to do different types of surveys. People that work as telephone interviewers spend a lot of their work day listening to themselves and many other people talk. When they get called in for feedback, often times, they will have to listen to a call they made, which means they have to listen to a recording of themselves.

After analyzing the results from the surveys that were passed out, 48 out of 65 people said they disliked the sound of their own voice on a recording. Eight out of 65 people were neutral about the sound of their voice. Similarly, 9 out of 65 people liked the sound of their own voice. The reason why people disliked the sound of their voice correlated with the scientific reason stated above.

More than 50% of the people who dislike their voice said it is because it sounds weird, different, or it doesn’t sound like them. Five out of the 8 people who are neutral about the sound of their voice also said that even though they don’t like/dislike their voice, it still sounds different than how they perceive it.

Predictably, the survey results match up very well with the science behind voices. So, believe it or not, the voice you hear when you listen to a recording of yourself is actually how your voice sounds and most likely how others perceive your voice. It would be best to make an effort to be content with the sound of your voice on a recording. Because after all, that’s you. That’s your real voice.