Ignazio Ziano
Tamara Rakic, Melanie C. Steffens and Amelie Mummendey
WHEN IT MATTERS HOW YOU PRONOUNCE IT:
THE INFLUENCE OF REGIONAL ACCENTS ON
JOB INTERVIEW OUTCOME
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Ignazio Ziano
WHAT CAN WE INFER FROM VOICES
If we listen to Bruce & Young (1986), there are
specific and unspecific aspects of face
recognition
 But both aspect can be processed
simultaneously

 Identity
and gender (Ganel&Goshen-Gottstein,
2002)
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WHAT CAN WE INFER FROM VOICES

Some categorical information (i.e., gender and
race) can be extracted during the face
encoding process
 Identity
recognition and categorization influence
each other (Quinn and MacRae, 2011)

Some dimensions (gender, race, identity) are
immediately and automatically activated.
 Face
is important, but voice is important as well
(Zuckerman et al, 2011)
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LINK BETWEEN VISUAL AND AUDITORY
PERCEPTION

Visual and auditory recognition are strongly
linked
 Auditory
cortex is used for silent speech-reading
(Calvert & al, 1997)
 Mc Gurk effect (Mc Gurk, 1976)
Face and voice contribute to identify a familiar
speaker’s identity (Schweinberger et al, 2007)
 They both are central and they interact

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WHAT CAN WE INFER FROM VOICES

A lot of information is inferred from voices.
 Age
 Gender
 Personality

traits
Voice attractiveness leads to more complex
inferences
 Personality
traits (competence, intelligence)
 General physical characteristics
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LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES

During the history of language development,
languages undergo a series of changed called
standardization
 one
among a set of similar languages becomes
standard and the others become non-standard
 GermanyHochdeutsch;
Francelangue d’oil; Italy
toscano
 Standardization of language correlates with economic
development.
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ITALIAN DIALECTS
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GERMAN DIALECTS
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FRENCH DIALECTS
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LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES
The standardized language acquires superiority
on different levels (status, prestige).
 Standard speakers are perceived as more
competent as non-standard speakers
 Belgian French speakers vs French French
speakers even by Belgians (Yzerbyt et al, 2005)
 British were perceived more intelligent and
higher-status than Americans even by
Americans (Stewart et al, 1985)

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LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES
Long story short: accents (or other linguistic
features) lead to the perception of speaker
group membership, which in turn causes a
judgment of group status and consequently, of
speaker status (Ng & Bradac, 1993).
 Accent  group  speaker status

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WHY DO DIALECTS PERSIST THEN?
Social pressure towards standardization is
heavy
 Everybody should be speaking correct
«standard language» because it is better forr
your own social perception
 Dialects and regional accents persist because
of the strong language-ethnicity bond

 Dialects
and accents are part of our identity
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DIALECTS AND REGIONAL ACCENTS IN
EVERYDAY LIFE

People use different speech strategies
depending on the context (speech
accomodation)
 Dialect
with your granma
 Strong accent with your childhod friends
 Standard language in university or at work
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DIALECTS AND REGIONAL ACCENTS IN
EVERYDAY LIFE
In general standard language users are
evaluated more positively
 But it depends. Meataanalyses show that

 dialect
speakers are usually rated less competent
and with a lower socio-intellectual status
 but with higher loyalty and integrity.
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EMPLOYABILITY
Perceived intelligence and competence are
decisive factors for employability
 Speech style should be irrelevant for manual
labor positions
 BUT NOT for management positions


(stand-offish, more resolute speech  more
competence evaluation).
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EXPERIMENT 1 - PARTICIPANTS
N=98
 age range 18-30


mean age 21.86.
50% from Thuringia
 20% from Saxony
 20 % from West Germany.
 5 non-native speakers

 Excluding
them, patterns remained the same.
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SPEAKERS’ ACCENT

6 different speakers
4
male
 German
standard accent
 Berlin accent
 Saxon accent
 Bavarian accent
2
female
 German
standard accent
 Saxon accent
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MATERIALS AND PROCEDURE - PRESTUDY

In a prestudy (N=18), participant demonstrated
not to be able of discriminating between
different, same-sex speakers
 responded
on a 7 point likert
1 = definitely different
 4 = not sure
 7 = definitely the same person

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THE TASK

They had to assess
Competence
 Hirability
 Socio – intellectual status


Based on

Job description
 Leadership
role in middle management position
 Willingly vague not to confound

The speakers’ answer
 Designed
to show high competence and social skill
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THE SCALES
Competence scale
 Social skills scale
 Hirability scale

 One

item specific for hirability
SDAS(speech dialect attitudinal scale) (Mulac
1975, 1976)

to assess the socio intellectual status and
aesthetic qualities of the voice
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RESULTS

Preliminary tests about
gender
 aesthetic quality of the voice
 participants’ regional background
 participants’ own indicated use of dialect

revealed no influence on hirability.
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RESULTS

Standard accent were perceived as more
 competent


hirable
of higher socio-intellectual status
than regional accent speakers.
 Bavarian speakers were perceived as having as
high a socio-intellectual status as standard
speakers.

 Bavaria
is economically strong?
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EXPERIMENT 2
Conducted to exclude any possible confound of
individual voice characteristics.
 N=140



age range between 18 and 70 years. (M=35)
No origin effect (62% from Thuringia)
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THE SPEAKERS

6 speakers;

2 men
 Berlin
accent
 Saxon accent

4 women
 Berlin
accent
 Saxon accent
 Bavarian accent
 Cologne accent

One sentence each, both with accent and with
regional accent; trained for the same speech rate
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THE TASK

Participants had to evaluate one set of 6
statements


half in standard German
half with regional accents
evaluate the speakers as they were
professional recruiters
 Evaluations on likert scales



3 statements about hirability
2 statements for competence.
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DISCUSSION
Regional accents instead of dialects kept
confounds to a minimum
 Why are accent speakers evaluated more
negatively?

 Ingroup/outgroup
 Failed
compliance to a social norm (speech
accomodation)
 Laziness impression?
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DISCUSSION

Why were Bavarians higher rated sociointellectually than other accents’ speakers?
 Economic
prowess of Bavaria?
but why were they not evaluated as more
competent or more hirable as well?
 Triggered stereotypes are likely more
complicated than that

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DISCUSSION
In Experiment 2,no position was specified
 accent still exerted a negative influence on
hirability



so contradicting the findings of no outcome of
accent on manual labor (Hopper and Williams
1973).
However some kind of jobs could be linked to
regional accents  further research.
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DISCUSSION
The sample did not consist of professional
recruiter
 Students seem to be more tolerant than
recruiters
 however, there are similar findings in a
recruiters’ population (Atkins 1993) stronger
effects on recruiters?

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DISCUSSION – GENDER EFFECT
No gender effect?
 Fiske (1998) accounts that women are
generally perceived as less competent than
men.
 Change in stereotyping?

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DISCUSSION – REGION OF ORIGIN
Did the region of origin have an effect on the
triggered effect?
 Would the effect be different if the data were
collected in Bavaria?
 Are some regional accents evaluated as worse
than others?

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DISCUSSION – AWARENESS AND WEAKNESS
Can people be trained to be aware of the
influence of accents?
 Can weak regional accents exerts some
influence?
 Lack of comprehension of accented speech
(Adank et al 2009)?

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