Voices and Prejudice: Accent-based information affects the perceived competence and social attractiveness of the speaker

People's voices are powerful markers for listeners to socially classify, stereotype, and form impressions of others. The present study used a behavioral technique to investigate whether the listener's ability to make inferences based on the speaker's accent can influence language comprehension. The study used voices with native and foreign accents belonging to non-Western ethnic groups (e.g., Chinese, Indian, Latin American, Arabic, Eastern European). These voices spoke a total of 186 sentences that could either conform to, violate, or be neutral toward a racial stereotype. After each sentence was presented, 70 participants rated the content and the speaker on expectancy, comprehension, competence, and social attractiveness. Results showed that the speaker's accent and the resulting stereotype-based inferences modulated the expectancy of the sentence. Furthermore, the study showed that accent-based information can influence perceived speaker competence and social attractiveness as a function of stereotypical or counter-stereotypical sentence semantics.