Mufasa of The Lion King. Darth Vader of Star Wars. Lt. Zogg of Dr. Strangelove. James Earl Jones’s famously low, chest resonating rumbles are undoubtedly memorable.  But, it’s now been clinically proven that women tend to remember things better when they’re spoken by deep male voices.  Dr. Yagoda calls this phenomenon the male magnet principle and believes there are strong implications about the role of the voice in attractiveness–or vocal aesthetics.The phrase “vocal aesthetics” might be puzzling to you. After all, we can’t see the voice. But it’s human nature to talk to others, and the sound of your voice can definitely effect the way that others perceive you. Imagine a telephone conversation, for example. The way that the person on the other end of the line speaks allows you to form an image of that person in your mind, which is purely based on his or her voice.

In fact, as it turns out, the pitch of your voice can actually make you more or less attractive to others. The new study, published in the journal Memory & Cognition, suggests that women prefer the sound of a deep male voice more than a higher-pitched voice. In fact, test results show that women are more likely to remember the name of an object when it was spoken by a lower-pitched male voice. So, ladies– when you find yourself irresistibly drawn to a magnetic, deep voice, you’ll know why!