THE HUMAN CONDITION : Making Those Sound Judgments

That voice.

“It was gorgeous, luscious, rich and resonant,” recalls Lillian Glass, describing the man at the other end of the line. They had never met face to face. “My mental image of him was that he was tall, maybe 6-foot-3, husky, well-built. A Pierce Brosnan type.”

And?

“He was short, overweight and looked, uh, not like Pierce Brosnan,” says Glass, who liked him anyway.

But her experience reflects a cruel truth: Forming a mental image of a person based strictly on voice is a precarious pastime, often an invitation to disappointment.

And if Glass--a Beverly Hills communications expert and vocal consultant to the stars--isn’t always good at it, where does that leave the rest of us?

Stumbling along, but stubbornly not giving up.

Putting a face to a voice--whether the phone conversation is business or social--is simply human nature.

“Most people do it,” says Steve Brody, a San Luis Obispo psychologist who specializes in communication issues.

Call it natural curiosity, a need to make things whole, a desire to connect, simple nosiness--or maybe a deep-rooted urge for a rich fantasy life.

Why the image is so often incorrect is another story.

“It shows how important the voice is,” Glass says. “We think a person with a good voice should be looking good.”

Jeannie Whited agrees. “When people have a very polished voice, I picture them as very good-looking,” says Whited, who as a director of communications spends much time on the telephone. Once, back in college, that proved true, she says. Most often, though, she’s wrong.

As Glass sees it, our personal history and past experiences play a large part in forming a mental image. New voices remind you of other people you’ve known, and from there the image builds.

Someone says “Howdy” just like your Uncle Ed, and up pops his likeness, although you might not be conscious of the process. An accent sounds just like your old college roommate’s. Another caller drawls like your long-lost childhood friend.

“Tone of voice is also important,” Brody adds, because we can associate it with someone with a similar tone. “The mind makes quick associations,” he says.

Suppose someone sounds very upbeat on the phone. “If you have a younger sister who’s the same way, it will trigger an image. You’ll envision her as looking like your sister,” he says.

“The voice is so misleading,” warns Harvey Kalmenson, who runs Kalmenson and Kalmenson, an Encino voice casting business, with his wife, Catherine. “You can’t tell how old someone is,” he says, “from talking to them on the phone.”

What you hear, he says, is often not what you get. Take the world of animation. “It is not unusual for women to play little boys’ [voices].”

Kalmenson tries not to play the mental image game, but his wife indulges.

“I do it unconsciously,” says Catherine Kalmenson, who admits hit-or-miss success. “I usually guess hair color correctly.”

A mistake people often make, says Glass, is associating a man’s deep voice with height.

“There is no correlation between voice and height,” she says. But you can sound taller. “You can train your voice to be lower, richer,” Glass says. “A lot of it is very subtle.”

Occupations can influence the image, as Brody well knows. He recently chatted by phone with a computer consultant. “He sounded very exacting and nerdy,” says Brody, who pictured a slightly built man. Not the case at all, he discovered during their face-to-face meeting.

Of course, the longer two people talk on the phone without meeting, the clearer the picture can get.

Consider Ashley Holden and Cynthia Gregory, who have spoken on the telephone nearly every week for three years--but have never met. Holden works at the Arthritis Foundation offices in Hancock Park. Gregory works in Beverly Hills for Dr. Rodney Bluestone, chairman of the foundation’s board of directors. So the two often talk business.

Holden has a mental picture of Gregory. “I think she is a small brunet. She’s very warm.” (Actually, Gregory, 43, describes herself as “blond with glasses, blue eyes, fair skinned, oval-faced and overweight.”)

Gregory pictures Holden as “very, very thin, a blond, about 45.” (Holden, in fact, is 5 feet, 7 inches, slim, blond and 46.)

Sometimes, of course, it might be better to simply stay with the mental image.

At first, it was strictly business when a thirtysomething Southern California marketing executive (who asked that his name not be used) began to call a book publicist in New York on behalf of a client.

“We talked every day for three months,” recalls the marketing exec. Soon, they were exchanging home numbers and talking in the evenings. They discovered they were both single.

Of course they were then dying to meet each other.

He got a little help with the mental picture, since she mentioned that “Everyone tells me I look like Andie MacDowell.”

Cut to the airport terminal, the beginning of what he describes as “the worst weekend of my life.”

She wasn’t an Andie MacDowell dead ringer.

These days, the marketing exec swears he’s reformed. His friends help. Now, every time he mentions a woman friend, including his current girlfriend, his pals want to know one thing: Does she look like Andie MacDowell?

Bruce St. James, the music director for Power 106 (KPWR-FM) radio, also tries to control the tendency. When he worked as a deejay in Tucson, he was often bombarded with late-night calls from adoring female listeners.

“I was always absolutely certain every woman who called looked like Heather Locklear and loved me for me,” he says.

“If that were true,” he sighs, “I’d still be in Tucson.”