The voice you use with your best friend may sound nothing like the one you use during a job interview. With family, you might speak faster, louder or more casually. With a manager, your voice may become measured and deliberate. With a child, you may automatically raise your pitch and exaggerate your expressions. These changes can feel so natural that you barely notice them. But psychology and communication research suggest that voice shifting can be part of a much broader process of social adaptation. People do not simply change how their voices sound; they can adjust speech rate, pronunciation, pitch, intensity, vocabulary and conversational style in response to the people and situations around them. Communication Accommodation Theory, developed by psychologist Howard Giles, provides one of the strongest frameworks for understanding why.
