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In Accents, We Do Not Trust
Americans are susceptible to doubt the reliability of someone with an accent, are citizens of the ‘ever closer union’ next?
The terminator ended his film debut by proclaiming that he will be back. The actor who portrayed the futuristic half robot half man, Arnold Schwarzenagger applied this catch phrase to his term in public office. As governor of California, Schwarzenagger was first elected into office in 2003 after a state recall, and then again in a standard election in 2006. The Austrian-born actor not only had his lack of experience in politics working against him, but according to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and published at the University of Chicago, he may have actually another, significant obstacle - his accent.
Even in a country built on the backs of immigrants, the study found that people with accents were less likely to be trusted than those who were native English speakers. In assessing the accuracy of statements, the participants listened to German, Korean, Italian, Polish, and Turkish accents, among others, all of which were scaled on different levels of thickness. Though there was little difference in terms of mistrust displayed when differentiating between the mother tongues, there was also only a slight change in terms of how heavy the accent itself was and the level of trust. Conclusively, the study reported that even a fluent English speaker, who had only a slight accent, would still be regarded with more suspicion than someone for whom English was a native language. It seems that though politicians may not be known for their honesty, they are still more likely to be trusted than the honest foreigner with an accent.
There do, however, seem to be some exceptions to the study and it remains unclear whether the findings are applicable to other languages and other countries. Schwarzenagger beat the odds in California - can others do the same?
Further, in entities like the European Union institutions or the United Nations, where English is certainly a working language but not necessarily the mother tongue of the majority of employees, the perception of mistrust seems to be rather unattached to the person’s nationality. In fact, for Members of the European Parliament, their accent plays a less obvious role, as most external, public operations are conducted in their native language. Commissioners, on the other hand, who generally work in French or English, do not seem to be at a disadvantage if they have an accent. For them, the determinant factor is generally linked to the contents of their portfolio, what would at least be a more objective indicator of their trustfulness.
The fact remains that as CVs become more and more flooded with language abilities, the use of an accent could very easily become a determinant factor in employee attractiveness. With a larger pool, the possibility to choose between a candidate who will be perceived as trustful and one that may be overlooked simply based on the way they sound may be somewhat discriminatory, but it may also become the new motivating factor for learning and speaking a language to perfection.