Intergroup Anxiety and Willingness to Accommodate: Exploring the Effects of Accent Stereotyping and Social Attraction

Abstract

Guided by communication accommodation theory, the current study examined the effects of accent stereotyping on native English speakers' (N = 243) perceptions of and willingness to communicate with the nonnative speaker and willingness to accommodate to Hispanic/Latino Americans in general. Accent stereotyping was manipulated through two experimental conditions: presence or absence of an explicit and negative stereotype in a written paragraph. After reading the paragraph, participants listened to a recording of an English speaker with a moderate, native-Spanish accent. Using PROCESS, results revealed participants in the stereotype condition rated the speaker as less socially attractive than the control condition, indicating accent stereotyping negatively affected perceptions of social attractiveness of the moderately accented speaker. Additionally, results indicated significant indirect effects of negative accent stereotyping on willingness to communicate with the speaker and willingness to accommodate to Hispanic/ Latino out-group members sequentially through perceived social attractiveness and communication anxiety.

Modern Notions of Accent-ism: Findings, Conceptualizations, and Implications for Interventions and Research on Nonnative Accents

“…People vary in their endorsed prejudiced beliefs. Accordingly, more negative evaluations of nonnative-accented speakers emerged among perceivers with higher social dominance orientation (Hansen & Dovidio, 2016), higher ethnocentrism (Neuliep & Speten-Hansen, 2013), and higher prejudice reported on respective scales (de Souza et al, 2016; Ura et al, 2015; for experimentally induced negative beliefs, see Koval & Fitzimons, 2016; Montgomery & Zhang, 2018). Even if people do not harbor prejudicial beliefs of a more general nature, normative concerns can be presumed to be low for (recognized) targets that are tied to acceptable prejudices (without normative protection, see Crandall et al, 2002; Franco & Maass, 1999).…”

Classical and Modern Prejudice toward Asylum Seekers: The Mediating Role of Intergroup Anxiety in a Sample of Italians

“…Thus, an increase in intergroup anxiety can lead people to express prejudice toward outgroup members. Intergroup anxiety has been shown in previous studies to affect negative outgroup attitudes (Brylka et al 2015;Montgomery and Zhang 2018;Voci and Hewstone 2003) as well as unfavourable prosocial support intentions (Hutchison et al 2018). While results from prior studies, also conducted in the Italian context, have confirmed the meditating role of intergroup anxiety (Brown and Hewstone 2005;Pettigrew and Tropp 2008;Voci and Hewstone 2003), this issue needs further investigation, in particular when different type of predictors as well as different intergroup perceptions are considered (Visintin et al 2017).…”

“…Thus, the present research used the intergroup threat theory (Stephan and Stephan 2000) as a theoretical framework to investigate classical and modern prejudice toward asylum seekers within a sample of Italians. We examined the antecedent factors of intergroup threat and its consequences, which in previous studies had been shown to predict negative outgroup attitudes either directly or indirectly through intergroup anxiety (Anderson 2018;Brylka et al 2015;Koc and Anderson 2018;Montgomery and Zhang 2018). Intergroup anxiety, which involves the anticipation of negative outcomes from intergroup interaction, can be considered as a subtype of threat centring on apprehensions about interacting with outgroup members (Stephan and Stephan 2000).…”

“Your English is Good for an Immigrant”: Examining Mixed Effects of Mindset Messages on Perceived Linguistic Potential of and Blame Attributions Towards ESL Migrants

“…explain people's prejudice and discrimination against ethnolinguistic outgroups, including migrants, and one important aspect that social psychologists have focused on is people's perceptions of non-native speakers and their speech (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010; Hansen & Dovidio, 2016; Kinzler et al, 2007). People who perceive migrants to have low fluency, strong accents, and low comprehensibility tend to have more negative attitudes toward migrants, and believe migrants are low in social status, less intelligent, credible, attractive, and hirable (Derwing et al, 2002; Dragojevic & Giles, 2016; Elliott & Leach, 2016; Fuertes et al, 2012; Hansen & Dovidio, 2016; Hosoda & Stone-Romero, 2010; Montgomery & Zhang, 2018). In addition, this research has shown that people who perceived migrants to have the potential to improve their language skills were also more supportive to migrants’ language education and more willing to interact with them, even controlling for their perceptions about their language fluency.…”