ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 30 April 2019 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00859 Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 April 2019 | Volume 10 | Article 859 Edited by: Alex L. Jones, Swansea University, United Kingdom Reviewed by: Benedict C. Jones, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom Phil McAleer, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom *Correspondence: Jan Havlí ˇ cek jhavlicek@natur.cuni.cz Pavel Šebesta pavelsebest@email.cz Specialty section: This article was submitted to Evolutionary Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 12 October 2018 Accepted: 01 April 2019 Published: 30 April 2019 Citation: Šebesta P, Tˇ rebický V, Fialová J and Havlí ˇ cek J (2019) Roar of a Champion: Loudness and Voice Pitch Predict Perceived Fighting Ability but Not Success in MMA Fighters. Front. Psychol. 10:859. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00859 Roar of a Champion: Loudness and Voice Pitch Predict Perceived Fighting Ability but Not Success in MMA Fighters Pavel Šebesta 1,2 *, Vít Tˇ rebický 1,3 , Jitka Fialová 1,3 and Jan Havlí ˇ cek 1,3 * 1 National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czechia, 2 Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czechia, 3 Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia Historically, antagonistic interactions have been a crucial determinant of access to various fitness-affecting resources. In many vertebrate species, information about relative fighting ability is conveyed, among other things, by vocalization. Previous research found that men’s upper-body strength can be assessed from voice. In the present study, we tested formidability perception of intimidating vocalization (roars) and a short utterance produced by amateur male MMA fighters attending the amateur European Championships in relation to their physical fitness indicators and fighting success. We also tested acoustic predictors of the perceived formidability. We found that body height, weight, and physical fitness failed to predict perceived formidability either from speech or from the roars. Similarly, there was no significant association between formidability of the roars and utterances and actual fighting success. Perceived formidability was predicted mainly by roars’ and utterances’ intensity and roars’ harmonics-to-noise ratio and duration. Interestingly, fundamental frequency (F 0 ) predicted formidability ratings in both roars and utterances but in an opposite manner, so that low F 0 utterances but high F 0 roars were rated as more formidable. Our results suggest that formidability perception is primarily driven by intensity and duration of the vocalizations. Keywords: speech, roar, vocalization, handgrip, competition, perception, human INTRODUCTION Historical and ethnographic evidence shows that physical encounters were a frequent way of resolving conflicts (Manson et al., 1991; Keeley, 1997). Cross-culturally, man’s fighting ability is a powerful determinant of access to resources (Daly and Wilson, 1988). These findings are complemented by psychological studies which show that stronger men are more prone to anger (Archer and Thanzami, 2007; Sell et al., 2009b). One may therefore expect that cognitive processes evolved for assessing the threat potential of a prospective opponent (Sell et al., 2009a; Puts, 2010). Earlier research tended to focus on visual cues to the threat potential. It has been demonstrated, for instance, that people can relatively accurately assess physical strength from images of body and face (Sell et al., 2009a; Holzleitner and Perrett, 2016; Kordsmeyer et al., 2018). Moreover, it seems that based on facial images raters can predict winners of mixed martial arts (MMA) fights (Tˇ rebický et al., 2013; Little et al., 2015; but see Tˇ rebický et al., 2019). The cues to threat potential are not restricted to the visual modality but evidence regarding vocal indicators of threat potential is rather mixed. On one hand, it was reported that both men and