Lately, I’ve been trying to be a better listener by using Carl Rogers’s technique of ‘unconditional positive regard’ (UPR), an idea I learned about on a recent psychology course. UPR refers to nonjudgmental acceptance of, and care for, a person – regardless of whether you agree with the things they say, think and do. It doesn’t suggest that you ignore or permit harmful behaviour, only that an individual should not have conditions they need to meet for them to be worthy of warmth and support.

When I first heard about UPR, it struck me that one reason it might be so powerful is that we very rarely come across this nonjudgmental approach in our daily lives. From socialising to contributing in meetings, it can often feel as though we’re being assessed in various ways. I thought about how comforting it is when you know you’re being held in a positive regard that isn’t going to waver, even if you have an off day or make an error – and whether this was something I could more intentionally foster for the people around me.

In practice, this has meant resisting the urge to jump in with advice, which I’ve noticed is often infused with judgment, and attempting to listen without necessarily looking for a solution. It’s revealed more of my own biases and thought patterns – such as the way I sometimes default to ‘I would/wouldn’t have done X’, rather than understanding where the other person is coming from. It’s meant asking more questions and being increasingly mindful of my nonverbal communication, such as avoiding facial expressions that communicate surprise or disagreement. Granted, I fail every day to uphold the aims of UPR, but the process of attempting it has increased my capacity for compassion – and a happy side-effect is that I seem to judge myself a little less now, too.

The sound of Christopher Walken’s voice is so embedded in my memory that it takes hardly any time to place it, even when it comes from the mouth of, say, a squirrel in a TV ad. Few celebrity voices are easier to recognise – or inspire more imitations – than his.

Is there some intrinsic quality that makes voices such as Walken’s especially memorable, whether they’re famous or not? While my own voice probably melts into the background for most who hear it, when I think of highly recognisable voices, some ordinary people spring to mind: a sixth-grade teacher, my cross-country coach, etc. Maybe others who heard them felt the same way.

Wilma Bainbridge and her colleagues had already found that some faces are more memorable than others – more likely to be recognised not just by one observer or another, but by people generally. The same has been found for objects, words and works of art. In a recent set of studies, Bainbridge, Cambria Revsine and Esther Goldberg at the University of Chicago explored whether voices differ in their memorability as well.

Thousands of participants listened to a series of clips: a procession of different voices that each spoke the same words (eg, ‘Don’t ask me to carry an oily rag like that’). The listeners’ job was to report when the same voice was repeated. Their success rates allowed the researchers to find out whether certain voices were more memorable on the whole.

Some voices were, indeed, stickier than others. The team also found evidence that quantifiable voice characteristics, such as the base pitch and speed, were collectively predictive of voice memorability. These results raise the possibility, the researchers say, that: ‘Tools could be developed to enhance the features that contribute to voice memorability’ – making a not-so-memorable voice, perhaps, a bit more Walkenesque.