Foreign-Looking Native-Accented People: More Competent When First Seen Rather Than Heard

Abstract

Psychological research has neglected people whose accent does not match their appearance. Most research on person perception has focused on appearance, overlooking accents that are equally important social cues. If accents were studied, it was often done in isolation (i.e., detached from appearance). We examine how varying accent and appearance information about people affects evaluations. We show that evaluations of expectancy-violating people shift in the direction of the added information. When a job candidate looked foreign, but later spoke with a native accent, his evaluations rose and he was evaluated best of all candidates (Experiment 1a). However, the sequence in which information was presented mattered: when heard first and then seen, his evaluations dropped (Experiment 1b). Findings demonstrate the importance of studying the combination and sequence of different types of information in impression formation. They also allow predicting reactions to ethnically mixed people, who are increasingly present in modern societies.

Toward a Century of Language Attitudes Research: Looking Back and Moving Forward

“…Prior to hearing a person speak, listeners may form expectations about the person's likely language behavior, typically based on contextual norms and/or social group stereotypes (Burgoon, 1993). Compared to speakers who confirm listeners' expectations, speakers who negatively violate expectations (i.e., use a less prestigious variety than expected) engender more negative evaluations, whereas speakers who positively violate expectations (i.e., use a more prestigious variety than expected) engender more positive evaluations (for norm-based violations, see Creber & Giles, 1983; for stereotype-based violations, see Hansen et al, 2018).…”

Examining the structural validity of stereotype content scales – A preregistered re-analysis of published data and discussion of possible future directions

“…A subset of these items has been used in later work (e.g., Asbrock, 2010;Hansen, Rakic, & Steffens, 2017Hellmann, Berthold, Rees, & Hellmann, 2015;Kemme, Essien, & Stelter, 2020;Kotzur, Friehs, Asbrock, & van Zalk, 2019;Kotzur, Forsbach, & Wagner, 2017;Kotzur, Schäfer, & Wagner, 2019;Kotzur et al, 2020). Whereas the majority of these studies examined scale performance based on exploratory approaches (e.g., principal component analysis; Asbrock, 2010) or reliability estimates only (e.g., Eckes, 2002;Hansen et al, 2017Hansen et al, , 2018Hellmann et al, 2015;Kotzur et al, 2017;Kotzur, Schäfer et al, 2019), less than a handful of German studies reported results from confirmatory approaches suited to fully assess the relevant aspects of scale performance previously discussed (Hackbart, Rapior, & Thies, 2020;Kotzur, Friehs et al, 2019;Kotzur et al, 2020). Based on their scale performance assessment, the authors of these few studies mostly concluded that the warmth and competence items did not perform as well as they would have liked for some of the target groups they investigated, which limited their main analyses (Kotzur, Friehs et al, 2019;Kotzur et al, 2020).…”

Deliberative control in audiovisual sociolinguistic perception*

“…Previous work on faces and voices in sociolinguistic perception suggests that the two modalities can influence one another (Hansen, Rakić, & Steffens, 2018; Hansen, Steffens, Rakić, & Wiese, 2016; Hanulíková, 2018; Williams, 1973). Rubin (1992) found that the co‐presence of an Asian‐appearing face as compared to a white‐appearing face prompted US undergraduates to report perceiving a foreign accent in a lecture recorded by a white speaker from Ohio.…”