Society & Culture - Posted by William Harms-Chicago on Thursday, July 22, 2010 17:46 - 7 Comments 
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Why we distrust foreign accents
Accent is one of the factors that influences people's perception of foreigners in a society, says psychologist Boaz Keysar. But its insidious impact on credibility is something researchers had not previously known, he adds. (Credit: iStockphoto)
U. CHICAGO (US)—A foreign accent undermines a person’s credibility in ways that the speaker and the listener don’t consciously realize, new research shows.
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Because an accent makes a person harder to understand, listeners are less likely to find what the person says as truthful, researchers found. The problem of credibility increases with the severity of the accent.
“The results have important implications for how people perceive non-native speakers of a language, particularly as mobility increases in the modern world, leading millions of people to be non-native speakers of the language they use daily,” says Boaz Keysar, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.
“Accent might reduce the credibility of non-native job seekers, eyewitnesses, reporters, or people taking calls in foreign call centers,” says postdoctoral researcher Shiri Lev-Ari, who is lead author of the study published in the current issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
To test the impact of accent on credibility, American participants were asked to judge the truthfulness of trivia statements by native or non-native speakers of English, such as, “A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can.”
Simple prejudice could affect ratings of truthfulness, so the researchers tried to minimize that effect by telling participants the information in the statements was prepared for the speakers, and was not based on the speakers’ own knowledge.
Despite knowing the speakers were reciting from a script, the participants judged as less truthful the statements coming from people with foreign accents. On a truthfulness scale prepared for the experiment, the participants gave native speakers a score of 7.5, people with mild accents a score of 6.95 and people with heavy accents a score of 6.84.
“The accent makes it harder for people to understand what the non-native speaker is saying,” Keysar says. “They misattribute the difficulty of understanding the speech to the truthfulness of the statements.”
In a second experiment, researchers tested whether awareness reduces the impact of accent on perceived truthfulness. Researchers told participants that they were being tested to see if accents undermine credibility.
That experiment was conducted with identical recorded statements, but with different results. While participants rated statements with mild accent just as truthful as statements by native speakers, they rated heavily accented statements as less truthful, Lev-Ari says.
Accent is one of the factors that influences people’s perception of foreigners in a society, Keysar pointed out. But its insidious impact on credibility is something researchers had not previously known, he adds.
The research was supported with a grant from the National Science Foundation.
More news from the University of Chicago: http://news.uchicago.edu/
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7 Comments
Jacob van der Horn
Janet Moore, Global Rainmaking
That is an excellent point, Jacob van der Horn. In addition to educational level, I wonder whether the listener’s level of international experience–positive and negative–impacts the results. For example, an experienced international businessperson who is accustomed to communicating across cultures may be less judgmental–especially if his/her cross-cultural experiences have been positive.
Dilip Chaudhuri
I fully agree with the findings of the subject research as well as with the two previous comments on the subject. I am a retired professor of engineering with academic and scietnific exposure to the educated community in USA and European countries for over 40 years. I have not made any conscious effort to erase my native accent while speaking in English. I hardly ever had any difficulty in communicating either with my students or with peers. Yet I have occasionally experienced small difficulties in communicating with community at large and even with people having a moderate level of education, which I, think corroborates the comments made earlier.
Lucie Richter
To add a point to this intriguing discussion, are there some foreign accents that have the opposite effect? For example, the British accents. In a business context, I often hear comments such as “I could listen to [person with British accent] talk for hours.”
Josen Zhong
I believe Lucie Richter has made a significant exploration by minimize the accents in to two categories, English speaking countries: like British and USA, and Non-English speaking countries: like France and some other European countries. However, commonly they treat English as the second national language and study it since primary school. In this case, the accent of some European countries may not course much difficulty in communicating or judgmental. So, in my opinion, the object should be further categorized by comprising Eastern countries, such as China and Japan. People in those countries are not treat English as a national language or any kind may face opposite influence of credibility by speaking English.
Jacob, I offer this comment in good humor and in the spirit of mutual learning. It sounds to me like your comment may be based on your instincts and the gut feelings produced by your experience rather than facts alone. In my experience, level of education is not as much a factor as are one’s self-awareness, one’s life experiences, and one’s values. Also, I think it a mistaken perception to believe that people with higher education decide based on facts whereas people with lower education decide based on feelings. In my experience, highly educated people often based their decisions on feelings and instinct. This may be an issue of temperament rather than education. So, with regard to the study, the findings of this research seem to point towards a basic xenophobic streak that runs throughout our species. Best, Alex
syed hoda
I definitely agree with Jacob; i feel that people of higher education OR exposure will react differently. Also, there are many americans, for example, who have never even left this country or have minimal multicultural exposure on a daily basis—-contrasted with people from (for example) New York City, who daily encounter a number of accents and multicultural linguistic manipulations. Interesting though…
I am wondering if the level of education of the listener is of influence .
My experience is that people with a higher education and intelligence are less influenced by an accent. They usually base their judgement on facts.
Lesser educated people must more rely on their instincts or gut feelings.
I have a strong dutch accent!!