The impact of British accents on perceptions of eyewitness statements

Abstract

The current study looked at the impact of British regional accents on evaluations of eyewitness testimony in criminal trials. Ninety participants were randomly presented with one of three video recordings of eyewitness testimony manipulated to be representative of Received Pronunciation (RP), Multicultural London English (MLE) or Birmingham accents. The impact of the accent was measured through eyewitness (a) accuracy, (b) credibility, (c) deception, (d) prestige, and (e) trial outcome (defendant guilt and sentence). RP was rated more favourably than MLE on accuracy, credibility and prestige. Accuracy and prestige were significant with RP rated more highly than a Birmingham accent. RP appears to be viewed more favourably than the MLE and Birmingham accents although the witness’s accents did not affect ratings of defendant guilt. Taken together, these findings show a preference for eyewitnesses to have RP speech over some regional accents.

The impact of developmental language disorder in a defendant's description on mock jurors’ perceptions and judgements

“…Accent bias refers to the discrimination of an individual who speaks with an accent, as accents convey (or are assumed to convey) social or racial information about an individual (Cantone et al., 2019 ). Previous findings suggest that mock jurors perceive an individual with a Received Pronunciation accent as more accurate, credible and prestigious (Frumkin & Thompson, 2020 ). Our participants appeared to link how our defendant spoke and behaved to class.…”

Investigating the utility of cognitive interview mnemonics among non-native English speakers

“…Perceived group membership-whether the speaker is from the listener's ingroup or not-and speaker confidence are also predictive of trustworthiness (Jiang et al, 2020). Even regional native accents are rated differently in terms of social status and trustworthiness, for example, with "lower class" British accents rated as less trustworthy than British Received Pronunciation (Frumkin & Stone, 2020;Frumkin & Thompson, 2020). Such social judgments are important to consider because non-native speakers may be seen as less credible than native speakers even when processing fluency is not an issue.…”

The Pronunciation of the Capital of Ukraine in English-Speaking Media

“…For learners, the emphasis has shifted from normative pronunciation (Levis, 2005), towards intelligibility (Levis, 2018). Though previous studies reported on accents having an impact on such diverse aspects as a person's trustworthiness (Anderson et al, 2007;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010), physical attractiveness and intelligence (Anderson et al, 2007), psychosocial, behavioural, and personality attributes (Shah, 2019), accuracy and prestige (Frumkin & Thompson, 2020), or people's perception of one's effectiveness, competence, and friendliness (Tsalikis et al, 1991). Nowadays prominent figures in politics and media often exhibit accent diversity (Lindsey, 2019).…”