Laurei: MuseLog

Science behind vocal amplitude and its link with motivation May 25, 2008

Vocal amplitude (wether ones voice is raised or lowered) whilst speaking or singing has amazing effects on humans physiologically; and we don’t meditate on this truth often enough - although it seems so simple. How do battle cries help win battles; and why do we feel the need to yell when we are angry? The simple science is that it is the perfect precursor to physical action - If our mental state is excited our hearts beat faster and this makes more of the available oxygen in our blood get to our heart faster in order to physically act. But if we add the act of raising ones voice for any length of time, we do something really important; we mechanically force more oxygen into our lungs, which(with a faster heartbeat) pre primes our brain with oxygen, making us more alert, and pre primes our muscles with oxygen and enable us to act faster and stronger, making the physical state change needed to perform an action actually smaller thereby inducing motivation. The effects of this are huge, which explains that if we are to go into battle, we should always battle cry first, but not only physical battles, mental battles also.

Motivation: it’s not just psycological.

Motivation is considered the amount of magical mental will power needed to complete a physical action, but it is more than psycological; motivation is the returned value of the mental algorithm summing up the physical energy expenditure, time, sacrifice of comfort, and possible gains of acting. Motivation can only be manipulated mentally by manipulating the value perceived in each argument (energy, time, sacrifice, gain, etc.), but it is easy to drastically reduce the value of some of these arguments (eg sacrifice of comfort) by the effects of raising ones voice.

Inducing motivation by forcing a heightened state of being

The good thing about raising ones voice is that it forces a heightened state of being with negligible prior motivation and reason; sometimes one possesses less motivation than needed for a particular task so using the device as a motivational tool does have profound effects, some examples are:

• Singing whilst working to force motivation to work harder.
• Singing whilst playing an instrument to force motivation to play better.

There are many ways. 

Social effects of raised voices

Raising ones voice is the perfect way to prime ones body and mind in many situations, but the effects can’t be isolated in a social setting, but effecting others has to do with confidence, leadership, and other matters best left for their own article.